Redemption Part Two
by AmberPalette
Summary: The conclusion of Snively's trials to prove his loyalty and worth to the Freedom Fighters. See Part One first! ;)


Disclaimer and Author's Note: All characters and situations except for "Sprocket" and "Commander Packbell" are copyright Sega Enterprises, Dic Entertainment, and Archie Publications. Commander Packbell, who is mentioned in passing, is a creation of author David Pistone. Sprocket is copyrighted to the author of this fanfiction and may NOT be used without permission.

We all have different tastes, so this is a fair warning: My work gets pretty gritty in places BUT I'm not keen on obscenities or heavily sexual situations, so if you're looking for shock value, it ain't here. **This is PG-13 material for violence, mature/heavy themes, and mild swearing**. Also, for those who like it fast-paced and brief, this is a very introspective, descriptive piece about the psychological exploration/development of one character. If you prefer lots of thrills and action to analyzing a person's inner thoughts and desires, this is not for you, either. 

Oh, yeah—please note, this is a VERY ROUGH DRAFT!! 

Redemption: 

Part 2

By "Ealain VanGogh"/Amber S.

(ACSdaVinci@AOL.com)

"Stranger than your sympathy

I take these things so I don't feel

I'm killing myself from the inside out

And now my head's been filled with doubt

It's hard to lead the life you choose

When all your luck's run out on you

You can't see when all your dreams are coming true

It's easy to forget

You choke on the regrets

Who the hell did I think I was?

I'm not sure where I belong

Nowhere's home and I'm all wrong

And I wasn't all the things

I tried to make believe I was

And I wouldn't be the one to kneel

Before the dreams I wanted

And all the talk and all the lies

Were all the empty things

Disguised as me

Stranger than your sympathy."

--the Goo Goo Dolls

****

Late Spring 3220, Castle Acorn

King Max had never taken much of a fancy to topiaries. Despite the frequent urgings of his court sorcerer, Ixis Naugus, the assertions that such was the court style of the "modern" and the "enlightened," he still found the crafting of shrubbery into recognizable animal forms a frivolous, if not somewhat disturbing, art. There was something sadistic in it, in manipulating and cutting away at something until it no longer resembled its natural shape. Something that seemed destructive rather than creative, harmful rather than nurturing. 

Max found such unkindness of spirit soul-sickening. 

Nevertheless, he hated to offend his trusted counselor, and Naugus had been adamant, so here he was on this soft morning, strolling amidst the freakishly altered vegetation, his eyes preferring to drink in the frothy beauty of the clouds that rolled benevolently above. The wind quickened, signaling an oncoming storm, but Max had only strayed a few feet into the grounds; he wasn't worried.

He had no clue of the repercussions, so far down the road, so many years later, of the piercing cries that erupted that instant, from the direction of the palace doors. The alarmed noises began suddenly and then rapidly crescendoed to shouts of rage. 

Snarls of, "You there! Stop at once!" and "Here, now, Overland filth, what brings your dirty hide to the king's doorstep?" flooded the peaceful morning air. His senses at once keenly aroused, Max drew his long sword, pivoted on his heel and barreled towards the palace I. 

Peculiar hissing, whining and growling sounds, presumably those of protest by the accosted intruder, mingled with the shouts that belonged to two of his royal officers. As he rounded the corner of the closest bush and charged up the steps, one of the irate voices surmounted the clamorous noise. 

"Sire! What do you make of _this _cheeky little brute?" From behind one of the façade's thick Doric pillars were two guards of, as their trophy-cases of badges might suggest, considerable rank. The first, the speaker, was a young fox wearing an eye patch and radiating a rough-hewn, roguish handsomeness. The second was an older and more seasoned coyote, his goatee flawlessly trimmed. His dark smoldering eyes were fixed with firmness, but not hatred, on their scrawny captive.

It was an Overlander boy, barely fourteen, Acorn guessed, with a jutting nose, pale complexion, and head rich with dark glossy hair now flying every which way in the manner of a molting falcon's feathers. He struggled with remarkable resolution and ferocity for his scant size, teeth gritted. 

Quite a little spitfire. 

The two grown men, indeed, found it difficult to restrain him. 

"We found _this_ one, M'Lord," the fox, Amadeus Prower, snarled, giving the vicious child's arm a jerk, "lurking about the Great Forest. Followed him all the way into the city. I've a mind to say 

he's an Overland Spy."

"He will say nothing, Sire," Pierre D'Coolette, the coyote, injected in a calm, restrained tone enriched with a French accent. "But I can assure you he is no spy, as Overlanders of all organized functions insist on wearing uniforms. This garcon sports no such thing and is most likely one of the many human refugees we've seen lately—much like your new friend, the scientist Julian Kintobor."

Instantly upon hearing the name, the boy shot ramrod straight and still. Then he saw the king's gaze fall upon him, and he slouched back into a restless sulk, attempting indifference, though his eyes were locked savagely, frenziedly, on Acorn's face. This was the first time the king took note of those eyes—they glimmered with an icy hatred of unfathomable depth, an arrogant, perceptive coldness beyond the boy's years, and were of the purest pale electric blue. 

The child licked his lips and said nothing. He rose one rebellious eyebrow as if to attempt condescension or devilishness, rakishness. However much he glared, though Max saw his fingers and legs trembling with terror. 

"Is it true what General D'Coolette says, boy?" the king prodded gently, in that practiced tone of a father. 

The boy's eyes wandered, strayed for the first time from Acorn's face, as if in shame. He cleared his throat. " If you ask whether I am indeed a refugee, I can say for certain there's _nothing_ for which I'd ever return to Megacentral," he rasped, voice soft, sneering, nasal. He again glowered at the monarch and those frosty eyes flashed. 

"He's lying," Amadeus growled. "Look at the varlet, just _look_—he can't even stare you straight in the face! From the same lot as those fighter pilots that shot down Ian St. John and orphaned young Geoffrey—"

Max rose a pacifying hand and opened his mouth to sternly silence his Captain . . .

When that twig of a boy lurched from the fox's grasp, looked him in the eye with set jutting jaw and hissed, so venomously that Amadeus himself staggered, "_Desertion_ is _never_ something to be proud of, _good sir_! You mistake my _embarrassment_ for _deceit_!" His ashen cheeks flushed a youthful scarlet with his vexation.

Amadeus was quite silenced, choking, perhaps, on his own consternation, and Pierre's jaw dropped.

But Max only appeared to be amused. He chuckled; it was a low, slow, throaty sound, pure and genuine and thrilling to the ear, and it seemed to calm the boy momentarily; the haughty little spitfire withdrew from the astounded fox Captain, crossed his arms fiercely over his chest, and blinked at Max in bewilderment. He had expected to be whipped or struck over he head for his outburst and was baffled—indeed, offended—at the king's inappropriate mirth. 

When Max composed himself, he said, "Well, but you're a saucy one! A fallen fledgling then? A plucked kestrel?"

The boy bit his lip and nodded. "A loner, M'Lord."

"Child, do you know to whom you speak?"

The boy's limbs tensed, as if he were trying to surmise the purpose of the question, as if he were wary of being tricked. "I . . . believe you are the king of Mobius Prime," he retorted cautiously, and added hastily, " . . . uh, _Sire_." The scarlet cheeks deepened to a positively fiery hue.

"Interesting he knew _that_ much," Prower, having recovered from the refugee's verbal assault, persisted.

"Well!" Again the hearty, thrilling laugh. "I should hope he _did_, Amadeus!" The hand that incurred peace and order again rose. "Take the child to a secured chamber, and see he has a meal and the facilities for . . ." he cast a look over the refugee's mud-caked garments " . . . a _long_ bath."

"Sire!" Prower gritted. " Remember your son, your wife! I _implore_ you, see that this lad is interrogated before . . ."

"_Enough_, Captain." Something in the king's eyes changed in that heartbeat, something that commanded submission. "A kingdom not built on generosity, trust, and mercy _begs_ to be usurped. We shall take any necessary risks to demonstrate our compassion for all the weary who stumble upon our doorstep." He smiled kindly at the Captain. "Even though they may cost us an _eye_."

"Or much _more_," Prower sighed, below D'Coolette's enthusiastic, "Well said, Sire!" Nevertheless the fox obeyed, attempting to ignore the insufferable smirk on the Overlander boy's face. Something was still wrong there, he was _certain_ . . . the shiftiness of the child's eyes, the coldness in his bearing, the darkness in his face . . . something _wrong._ He could not help automatically recalling to mind that peculiar, reclusive Overland scientist, Julian, whom they had only months ago taken in under similar circumstances. Yes, the same feeling of having one's most vulnerable parts exposed in utter blackness. He couldn't explain or express it, except in a way that seemed irrational and ludicrous to his superior officers, or worse yet, bigoted against those hairless humans up North-no, he couldn't possibly explain himself, not when it came to Julian or, now, to this boy. So off they walked, obeying Max's orders, while a potent wave of foreboding seized the fox's heart. 

"Boy, I have one final question!" the monarch called after them, interrupting Amadeus's thoughts, and the child, between Prower and D'Coolette, again tensed like one who hides a grave and shameful secret. Yes, M'Lord?" he croaked, seemingly afraid to turn and face the king. 

"What's your _name_, son?" The king exclaimed. "Can you believe it? A new subject of my kingdom, and I forgot to ask your _name_! By Aurora, I fear I'm getting old and dunder-brained _already_!" His laughter this time was like a great roar, joined by the General's warm chortling and the Captain's weary groan. 

The boy shuffled his feet. "It's, um . . ."

"Yes? Go on!"

"Ah, well, _legally _it's Colin James Kintobor II, but—" The title spilled hastily from the boy's lips. 

"Kintobor!" Amadeus cut him off. "_Kintobor_! Julian's brother, Colin Senior—The Overland Justice Minister! That's the one that shot down your champion, Jules Hedgehog! This is his _son_? Oh, _Max_, do you see, he _was _hiding something from you. . ."

"_Silence_, Captain. I'm well aware of that. A father's deed is _not _his _son's_. Boy, you seemed to hesitate. Is there anything _else_ we're to call you?"

"Well. . . everyone, um, back home, called me, uh . . ." the boy swallowed, grinning sheepishly " . . . _Snively_."

"Snively, eh? Well, Snively,' _welcome _to Mobitropolis!"

Two years later, the "plucked kestrel," without hesitation, turned the knob on the Void Machine exiling a king who showed him nothing but charity and mercy to a hell from which the great monarch would not escape for eleven years. 

Snively Kintobor was considered the greatest traitor of his time, second only to his uncle, Dr. Julian Kintobor—Ivo Robotnik. 

****

Early Spring 3235, Knothole

"I am the biggest hypocrite

I have been undeniably jealous

I have been loud and pretentious

I have been utterly threatened

I've gotten candy for my self-interest. . . 

Heaven forbid I be criticized

Heaven forbid I be ignored.

I have abused my power, forgive me

You mean we actually all are one.

I've been out of reach and separatist

Heaven forbid average (whatever average means)

I have compensated for my days 

Of powerlessness.

I have abused my so-called power forgive me

You mean we actually all are one

Always looked good on paper

Sounded good in theory"

--Alanis Morissette

Something changed drastically in Snively Kintobor after the day that Bernie Hedgehog offered him a chocolate chip cookie. 

It almost made Princess Sally inclined to deliver such a warm, gooey gift to Robotnik's doorstop and exorcise the wicked demons of his psyche as well, thus ending the war, and with it, her every anxiety.

But she suspected it was more than the cookies that had begun to cleanse something deep within the young human's spirit. Something embedded within the act of including him—remembering his existence, remembering the man behind the monster—had washed at least one layer of the grime off his soul. 

It had been two months since that day of awakening—two months of gritted teeth and cautious optimism, while the nephew of Robotnik ate, drank, breathed, pondered, worked, and pained with Mobians. And even, once in a while, laughed with them despite his occasional acid remarks and grunts of disgust. 

Sally was more aware of Snively's presence every day; her comrades, however, slowly grew to tolerate him until he faded into the mosaic background of the village, like other unpleasant but irrevocable environmental quirks: like a gust of filthy, smoggy air from the city, the odor of stagnating pools in the nearby Great Swamp, or the incidental mosquito swarm on balmy evenings. He was tolerated . . . though neither accepted nor desired. 

Sally wished she could deal with his existence so easily. 

Nightmares oozed into her evening reveries; each time she closed her eyes, one catastrophic, blood-hewn event after another rolled past her, all at Snively's hands, all her fault for trusting him 

. . . Tails found mauled in his bedroom, his stuffed toys and storybooks all ravaged and shredded, pages fluttering in the air like mourning doves, and a note on the child's pillow reading, "Thanks for the entertainment. Love, Snively" . . .

. . . Uncle Chuck knocked out by a monkey wrench while consorting with the human in his cell, kidnapped and taken to Robotropolis to be fed through the metal scrapper . . . Snively laughing maniacally all the way through the forest while making his delivery to dear old uncle. . . 

. . . The village burned to the ground, Bunnie, Antoine, Sonic all barricaded in their huts and incinerated along with wood and straw, and Snively wielding the igniting torch . . . 

. . . Her father's throat slit quickly and neatly while he slept, by a deft human hand holding pocketknife filched from Rotor's utility belt, red rivulets staining the king's white dressing gown, the bedsheets, her soul, her world, her world . . . 

. . . her world stained—the location of Knothole Village finally revealed to Robotnik by a whining, wheedling, serpentine human voice—Armageddon. 

And Sally's hate for Snively, just by the fear of these things not yet come to pass, again grew, and began to strangle her inner sense of logic. With decreasing rarity, she wanted to see him slip up, make the fatal error, so that she could justifiably condemn him again, have him pegged: Life could become simpler again and villains could be ONLY villains, heroes ONLY heroes, and no maddening, terrifying gray area could be established in between. No possibility, no uncertainty, for better or worse.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," one Overlander by the name of Shakespeare had, in ancient times, uttered. Hers was this grievous human credo. 

And this fresh cool morning, the grass outside bejeweled with dew, Sally could hardly enjoy the bounties that WERE certain, in light of her fears. She bustled from her hut to Bunnie's, the site of the daily schematics meeting: Meetings rotated weekly to each hut, so that everyone would be responsible for providing the appropriate environment for study and discussion. When she rounded the corner past the bridge, and stumbled through the miniature forest of lilacs, carrot crops, tomato plants, and honeysuckle bushes Bunnie so delighted in nurturing, she already found her companions standing in a circle outside the door. Sonic vaulted onto the roof of the hut and brayed her name, as usual tapping his foot to indicate his unbearable irritation. 

She grinned broadly, if only because his presence always sent a calming sense, like sweet molasses, down her frame—he could make her forget her fears. Temporarily.

"Hey Sally," Tails, tagging along with the adults, bounded towards the monarch and flung his left wrist in her face—so unintentionally unsettling her, as he squealed, "you won't believe what _Snively_ did for me yesterday! Look'a my watch!" 

At the sound of her nightmare-giver's name, the air in Sally's chest seemed lurched from her, as if her lungs had suddenly shriveled and collapsed. Sonic alone could detect the subtlest of emotional disturbances in the princess. His eyes shifted her way at the sound of her sudden gasp, and at the sight of hairs rising on her neck, trembling hands clasping her chest. The hedgehog cocked his head, distressed by his closest confidante's disgruntlement. "Sal . . . ?" he began to ask, moving towards her to interrupt.

The princess shook her head once, to indicate that she was fully intact, and Sonic stepped back, satisfied; theirs was a silent but certain myriad of intimate cues, hints and conversations which none of the other Freedom Fighters had ever been able to access . . . 

And which she was very grateful to have ever since Snively's arrival. Ever since the ripples of doubt that he had brought to disturb their wooded utopia.

With a deep breath, the monarch managed to inspect the gadget her young charge so joyfully displayed: It was once a simple, leather-bound teller of time, and even that agent damaged beyond repair a year or so back, when the fox child had swum too long in the river and broken its mechanisms. Now its clock not only functioned with utter precision—her own wristwatch matched it to the millisecond—but the leather band had also been replaced by a sleek, rust-resistant chain of metal. Overnight.

  
Tails squirmed impatiently. "Here," he finally burst, "push this!"

Sally obeyed, pressing a small red button at the bottom of the watch face. Immediately two tiny digital screens zipped out of each side of the face. One displayed a topographic map of the entire surrounding forest, the other showed continuously fluctuating temperature, barometer, and dewpoint profiles for the local atmosphere. There was even a strange little microphone looking communication device on the band.

The princess's jaw dropped. "He did all this _yesterday_?"

"It's so I can go out more on my own without grown-ups around," the child explained, breathless with glee, "since I'm ten now and—and—and all that stuff! It also has night vision, like a flashlight, in case I get separated from Sonic during training missions! And a little alarm goes off if anything that's the same kind of metal as SWATbots is within a quarter mile of me! Isn't that neato what Snively did for me, Aunt Sally?"

But Sally had stopped listening after she saw the map of the forest. Snively now knew every inch of their secret home. And anybody to whom he was secretly still allied . . . 

Suddenly her every hideous nighttime fantasy was moving in for the kill. The pressure earlier felt on her chest was sinking its fangs into her jugular. And fear, all in one great surge, turned to rage.

Rotor, who supervised Snively's every act, anticipated the misgiving—and the wrath—building on his princess's face. The others withdrew. 

Sally's arms went rigid at her sides, a crack in the wall of her composure, lips tightly pursed. "Oh, _Rotor_ . . . _without_ my jurisdiction . . . without my _father's_ . . . "

"Sally," the hapless walrus breathed, trying not to let his voice quaver, "before you get upset, I want you to know I _watched_ him make the alterations on the watch. The map of the Great Forest is . . . it's not . . . well, I mean, if he were to go and . . . it wouldn't tell Robotnik _anything_, Sally. Anyway, Snively's _not_ trying to . . . well, can't you give him a _chance_? He really isn't –"

"_How do you know_?" Sally hissed. Words sprayed out her mouth like water through the crack in a concrete riverdam—one too long eroded by effort to conceal all feeling for the sake of others. Her voice grew uncharacteristically cutting. "Because he _likes_' you, Rotor? Because he tells you how good you are with a _monkey wrench_?" She stamped her foot on the earth, unsettling dust and pollen that enshrouded her taut body like an ominous nimbus cloud. "_Robotnik_ could tell you that! I am _sick _of _pretending _we are safe in that man's presence! It's time you too bore the burden of my worry—for your _own_ safety! _I _wanted to believe he'd changed, too. _I _wanted to _trust _him and take full advantage of his genius, but . . . but every day, I. . . Listen, it's _your_ responsibility to fear the worst _too_—it's _everyone's_, as long as Snively is with us." She grasped throbbing temples, swallowed back angry tears. 

Now Sonic, frustrated with having been forbidden to comfort her, paced in wide circles around the squirrel and walrus, searching for a way to intercede.

His face grew stormier as Sally plunged on. "That _traitor _could spend two lifetimes making us cute little mechanical presents"—she stabbed an index finger at the watch—" like _that_, and it wouldn't prove _anything_ about his inner loyalties. I've been reading a lot of ancient human literature lately, Rotor. Shakespeare is my favorite. He once spoke of hypocrisy _quite _convincingly. _Opinion's but a fool, who makes us scan the outward habit for the inward man._' Do you _understand _that, Rotor? Do you understand what even the most _trivial _of knowledge in _that man's _hands could _do_?" Now she gestured in the ever-gullible Tails's direction, as if thrusting an invisible, protective net or forcefield over the child, one Rotor was too easily duped to provide. "We are at his _mercy _if we mistake _flattery _for _love_ . . . and so are our children . . . _helpless children_ . . . like Tails. No amount of mercy or compassion is _worth_ that."

Bunnie stepped forward to pull an uncomprehending Tails from the crossfire. "But I thought it was cool," the naïve child protested, his huge dark eyes growing glassy. "I thought he was being _nice_ to me! What's wrong with it, Aunt Sally?" Hastily he unhooked the newfound treasure and scanned it for flaws. 

"Tails, before you offer Snively your undying gratitude, you'd be wise to ask him EXACTLY who helped roboticize your . . ." Sally's reprimand puttered to a halt, as she watched the confused expression of the kitsune wither into that of acute sorrow. That young lip began to quiver. She tempered her words. "Sweetie, I know you don't want to HATE anybody . . . but you also don't have to JUDGE a person by remembering his good AND bad sides— you can care about someone _without_ trusting him. You . . ." But then her words again trailed—for she realized she DIDN'T care about Snively—whether he flourished or floundered. And was this indeed a just sentiment? Did he indeed have any _worth _that a child like Tails could intuitively recognize, and a child of war like herself, robbed of so many of youth's basic joys, was too spent, too cautious to note? She gnawed on her lip. Was Tails just too fresh a being on this scorched planet to recall and realize all that Snively and his uncle had filched from their world? Yes, surely that was it . . . and yet . . . 

A recent memory flooded her mind: the savage beauty of watching Robotnik's Nephew in his element, the day he fixed Nicole. There was a kind of freedom in him that she'd never beheld before, a purging. A kind of Mobian Spirit. 

__

He was perched on the top of Rotor's worktable making the last of his finishing touches on the fragile computer's circuitry, while the walrus and princess labored underneath the hovercraft they'd stolen from Robotnik. Finally, as a river of black oil belched down from the severed fuel tube all over her face and vest, Sally hissed a sigh and wheeled out from under the machine. Rotor meekly followed.

Snively was already there standing over them, keen like a mosquito probing its next juicy skin puncture, yet somehow lacking the characteristic ill will. Nicole was strapped bleeping healthily over his shoulder; his hand brandished a clipboard and a pencil was poised readily behind his ear. Despite dark circles under his eyes, his face was the epitome of alert energy. "Does Your Grace wish me to make an inventory of our newly filched . . . ah, I mean obtained . . . weapons supplies?" He had suggested in a brisk, accommodating tone.

_Sally had scrambled to her feet with a storm in her eyes. "No, My Grace' does not wish anything of the sort," she snapped, tearing Nicole from his shoulder and inspecting the computer's display screen for signs of sabotage—it was free of deceptive tampering. Sally scanned her foe's face; again, as before, it looked both hurt and eager. Again he helplessly wrung his hands. He was still_ _being genuine. "But," she continued, as that face brightened with expectancy, "a deft hand is needed to fix the transmission of this hovercraft immediately."_

"At once, Your Highness," Snively replied, and dropping the clipboard and pencil on the spot, darted beneath the hovercraft. His unkempt hair tumbled in his eyes as he flew to Rotor's side. 

"I told you to call me Sally, like everyone else does," she snarled, as if trying to force her own insecurities about his new sense of atonement to the back of her mind. It wasn't fully working. Not quite yet.

_Sally wiped oil smudges off her vexed round face. She couldn't tell whether Snively was listening; he appeared to have been seized by a fierce, wild fixation upon the gears and wires with which she had commanded his skillful fingers to manipulate, his eyes narrow and glistening, his tongue tracing his lips and two crooked, fang-like canine teeth in the sides of his mouth. A vicious grin spread, as if he were starving to complete the task—as if it were not merely an occupation, but the affirmation of his intelligence and skill, the proof of his soul's worth. For all his brilliance, Rotor was a bumbling novice next to this former Chief Commander and warrior technician of the mechanical Rome—Robotropolis. The walrus had long since sat up and humbly looked on in wonder, shaking his head slowly. _

_Sally was fit to chastise the Overlander more; she knew not why, for he was on such sterling behavior. But when he finished a job in two minutes that was anticipated to take two hours, and stood and nervously turned on the craft's power, the whirr of its engines along with his nervous query of "Will . . .will this do?" immediately killed her irritation._

"Thank you," she had murmured. "That will be all." And, a little disappointed by her lack of enthusiasm, Snively had left the room for Geoffrey St. John, his angrily awaiting escort. 

Why did she feel so dirty to be associating with a man who had really said he was sorry? Who had really meant it? Why did she feel so filthy and unholy to use Snively's gifts to her advantage? Perhaps she always wanted to be the kindest. She wanted to be the martyr, not her once-enemy now reformed; she wanted to be the one cleansed white as snow, kind and caring and persecuted by foes, thriving in spite of it. Not him. Not him. "Snively," she had called after him. 

He paused and turned. "Yes, Your . . .yes, Sally?" Wringing those bony white hands again.

God, she detested him still when he looked at her with such fear, such pathetic cowering fear. As if she would ever be the despot who struck a diligent follower the way his uncle had. How dare he place her on Robotnik's level? I will be kind, and that will cleanse me of the grime of his past, and his presence among my people_. "I want to thank you for your assistance by letting you go free from your cell this week. If you maintain my trust through your actions, I will see about getting your citizenship more quickly."_

_Snively had blinked in disbelief, gulped hard and bitten his lip. The faintest of "Thank you" 's wheezed out his lip before he exited, a positively irate Geoffrey in tow. Still, once outside, the human managed a wickedly triumphant sneer in St. John's face, and brushed past. "Be seeing you, Geoff," was his mocking purr of departure in the skunk's ear. _

"You'll regret this," St. John had pledged, aiming an index finger at Sally, before making his own exit. She wished she could deny the claim.

****

Robotropolis 

There had been a time when he'd loved the tangy sweet aroma of exhaust and gasoline: produced by the fierce industry of machines.

HIS machines.

A time when he'd relished the orchestra of metal grating metal, iron molten over a pit, electricity surging through the mesh veins of the city.

HIS city.

Creating screams, shattering minds, crumbling spirits, by extending his hands—his metallic empire—HIS—throughout the very heart and core of the planet. Squeezing its vitality bare, emaciating its joy. Cultivating the mold, the rotting apathy, that devoured the planet's expired carcass. HIS deeds. Glory. _Legacy_.

No one could deny there had been a time when Julian Kintobor had delighted in mutating the throne of the King's audience hall, turning the King's throne into his monstrous pillar of progress, flawlessness, a testimony to the mind-boggling conquests of a man who had effaced the very signature of life from his environment. 

The King's throne? No. HIS throne. HIS conquest. HIS world. Predestined. Fated, inevitable. Robotnik was superior to all creatures. He had no cause to submit to his underlings, to care for their toils. 

Why, then, had Fate dealt him such a blow—forced him to grovel before an inferior right this _minute_, to grovel on HIS cold platinum floor, in order that the vile commoner's wrath were not aroused? Why had Fate allowed that his inferior might raise a pinky finger against his might, and make it crumble? A crime against sanity, it was.

But crime or no crime, Ixis Naugus was angry this evening. Livid—per usual. Angry because his intellectual superior had dared challenge his painfully faulty reasoning. Too damned _arrogant_ to comprehend his own fallacy. 

__

Robotnik was infallible. He _knew_ he was. _He_ was not arrogant to believe this—his was merely the logical acknowledgement of reality. A reality others—his envious brother, his critical mother and insane father, his human peers, the filthy Mobians, his impudent nephew, and now Naugus—had simply refused to grasp. And they had undergone such _needless _pain for it—pain that, in paying back for the inconveniences it caused Robotnik, dealt him a great deal of pleasure indeed. No, he did not regret their error in judgment, their refusal to comply with his logical seizure of the Mobian government, for he at least got to revel in their misery. It made his fingertips and the pit of his stomach and his mind, his most secret of places, all tingle with glee to see—more than glee, _nirvana_. The kind of carnal pleasure that no woman or food or fantasy or accomplishment could possibly fulfill. But Naugus. . . Naugus was not so easy to inflict pain upon. And so, from Naugus, Julian Kintobor was incapable of drawing his pleasure—like an empty well in a drought. Like a bloody dead-end in a dark alley. For he was the same mettle of man as Julian himself, and so he was not so easily dominated—or, later, when he rebelled, _spited_.

__

Damn the fool! _Thrice-damn him! _How could the sorcerer overlook Julian's genius, not pardon him of his deeds merely by the virtue of his prodigal brilliance? How not realize the simple truth that one so far above that which was mundane, that which was ordinary, was above the petty rules of good conduct, the laws of morality' and heart' and loyalty?' What need a stunning meteor blazing in the sky above obey of the topmost manmade ceiling? It need not answer to such limitations. Neither did _he_. Vile, was the mind of Naugus. Absurd—CRIMINAL! Another indisputable fact gestating in the bowels of Julian Kintobor's teeming brain. Thus, when the wizard, trembling from chipped horn to booted toe with rage, had roared his new slave's name, and Robotnik had skulked out of the deepest shadows of the Main Control Room to grovel before his delusional master. . . oh, how the despot had lusted to carve a gaping, goring, blood-gushing chunk out of Naugus's pasty forehead. The thought, to Robotnik, was binging on delightful cravings; spite to cure his sadism as a desired dish cures starvation. It was his sole comfort.

"But, Master," the cultivated manipulator crooned, attempting yet again to convince the agitated Naugus of a tiresomely disputed FACT of security. "Surely you in all your wisdom have taken note of the sudden loss of our commanders to the woodlands behind the city? Surely you can guess the _destination_ of their wanderi—"

"OUR city?" the wizard snapped, brooding. He jolted from his uneasy seat at the Mainframe console, a wholly alien entity to his magic-conjuring hands in the first place, hard black eyes shrewdly aglimmer. This sense of personal ignorance had only added to his irritation towards his newly appointed lackey. He was projecting personal incompetence on Robotnik. 

The ironic truth rendered the doctor, secretly, both terribly satisfied and terribly frightened. So he hastily corrected himself, though through clenched jowls, "YOUR city, Milord."

"Better." Naugus lashed his long slithering tail about the console and rested it upon a keyboard—the most complicated and precious—the one Snively's deft fingers had operated for over a decade past. As the weight of the scaly tail unwittingly slathered jibberish type all across the blue monitor screen, Roobtnik wished for a fleeting instant that his putrid kin were still manning the post, rather than lying in some ditch horribly mangled by the Mobians, even more useless to his uncle than he'd ever been. Snively had been a lovely daily reminder of Robotnik's preeminence over _all_ life. . . because he had been, by contrast, so _pathetic_. "So, slave," the wizard hissed the despot out of his trance, "what OF the loss of commanders? Why does it. . ." he wheezed a cackle. . . "_trouble_ you?"

"The commander security cards and the voice print recognition codes on all doors and robotic neurocircuits have not been altered since my nephew's reign. He was a pathetic little pustule, but I grant him the common sense to thoroughly reprogram every single bot's system in order that any favored sub-commander might have easy access in and out of the city—"

"Get to the POINT, fool!"

Robotnik repressed the urge to run or to engage in a suicidal loss of temper. He drew a deep breath and plastered a yet wider congenial smile on his face. "I believe, sir, that any one of those sub-commanders who left Robotropolis this past month are a threat to the city's wellbeing. They could waltz into the premises—crawl into the _air ducts_, for all we know—and take or destroy whatever they pleased, so long as the security codes are still calibrated to them with a non-hostile recognition mode."

Naugus's claw, having propped up his bored countenance throughout Robotnik's proposal, found the begnarled horn atop his head. His beady black eyes did not alter in aperture or expression. But the claw, as if of its own accord, made harsh spasmic gestures, locking around the ugly sharp thing, clicking and clonking on it almost rhythmically. It was hideously unnerving. He sneered at his slave's taut posture; the malicious mirth seeped into his disinterested voice. "Who do you think would have the temerity to undermine my security _and_ enter _any _of the buildings—the only creatures competent at missions against this city are the accursed blue Quickster and his Freedom Fighters, and they shan't get far before I have them shot in the head." The eyes at last narrowed with suspicion. "Or is there _more_ to these fears of yours?" A wheeze—he was laughing. The hairless tail curled again, venomously, like a cracking whip. "A little familial contention, perhaps? So craven that you've now developed a fear of the nephew you left for DEAD?" He cackled. "Does Snively haunt your dreams, Julian? Do his spindly little hands clutch your throat and SQUEEZE?"

"No, Milord, it's not _Snively_ that I . . .that I fear." Liar. But Naugus could not read minds. And Naugus had never seen Snively at his worst—at his cunning worst. The tiny mosquito that only pricked the skin, but that spread the encephalitis, the disease that _killed._ Robotnik was painfully aware of his nephew's dangerous potential now. Now, when, should Naugus disregard his suggestions, it was too late. So he plunged ahead, grasping at the lesser evil. "He or any of his sub-commanders may have spilled our weaknesses to the Freedom Fighters. _They_ may yet be a threat!"

Now Naugus reared from his seat at the console, clawed his slave's shirt into his hand and snarled words so freakishly familiar, "You DARE imply that they are a match for ME?"

__

For ME, Snively? That was what Julian had roared in his nephew's face, just before Sonic and Sally had sent him careening into the Void, on Doomsday. _Perish the thought, sir, _the boy, trembling, had assured him. Had _lied_. But had _known_ _better_. Better than—no. _No_. Naugus's madness was contagious. Robotnik would not allow himself to concede that Snively could ever be his superior. _No one_ could. 

Nevertheless, he heard his lips parrot his nephew's expert groveling tones: "Perish the thought, Master Naugus."

"In any case," the wizard roared, less than appeased, "the only prisoner I valued keeping was the king, and you already LOST him for me, during the last Freedom Fighter raid—it seems it's _your _imbecilic _mind_, rather than a few insignificant security codes, that needs a little _changing_! No, Julian, I will _not_ waste the time or energy on _your_ petty fears." He smirked. "But I do believe I have some repairing to do." And he rose a claw high above him. "Wanna _play_?"

Robotnik screamed. But he was most appalled by the final thought that graced his mind before Naugus dealt the blow:

__

I miss Snively.

****

Knothole

Speak indeed of the devil. Sally rolled her eyes.

A cry of frustration, and Snively appeared from around the corner of the men's cluster of huts. He raced up to the circle of Freedom Fighters, his arms flailing at the sky and clutching a disheveled pile of paperwork. An expression of inexplicable panic and despair contorted his face, matched easily by the anxiety on the recently upbraided Rotor's face and pigeon toes. One hand flew to the human's forehead and clutched it, veins strained against his skin of his temples. He was mumbling something inaudible, babbling incoherently at them, it seemed, until he was face-to-face with the princess, shattering her reverie. Sally made out an "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" amidst the soft stream of chattering. 

A crease of puzzlement furrowed her brows. "What for?" She demanded of the apoplectic human. What for THIS time?

"Well, hey-ya, there, Sugar—" Bunnie attempted a warm greeting, if only to break the thick awkwardness coating the air around them all.

"I know the analysis isn't completed yet," Snively began breathlessly, unheeding, his mouth spilling and tripping over words, "but I slept in an hour this morning, and I only got started at noon. Please, I promise I can do better—here, these are the reports I've finished so far—Good God, where _is_ Sir Charles, anyhow?" He was beginning to pant.

Sally only blinked and stopped listening as she struggled to comprehend to what he was referring. "What assignment?" Then it came to her—However forbidden from directly attending, he had demanded more personal contribution to the deroboticizer missions; he must be referring to the new security codes on all forty of the Central Command building doors, which she and Chuck had given him to crack . . .

__

The night before. "Snively!" She half-gasped. "I gave you that assignment _last night_!" 

He cringed as if preparing to be struck. _Hard_. "I know, I know, I'm sorry! I've done shoddy work—"

"_Shoddy_!" Now Sonic and Sally exchanged an incredulous laugh, and Rotor shook his head at the driven little man, at the flawless detail of his "unfinished" reports. "Snively," Sally exclaimed, " we expected this to take you a whole _week_ to accomplish!"

The Overlander's eyes became enormous, luminous saucers. "A _week_?" He stood contemplating it a moment, his eyes narrowing. "Is this some kind of cruel joke?" He hissed.

Sally smiled, all anger lost in this epiphany. How amazing. Kindness and compassion were just too far beyond the comprehension of one whose trust had been so wounded. "In case you need reminding—you're not in Robotropolis anymore, Snively. I'm not your uncle. I don't have some hidden bullwhip hat I pull out and crack when someone makes a mistake." She chuckled dryly, fingering a stray auburn hair. "You have my Royal Permission to be fallible." 

"Unless you're a blue hedgehog," Sonic brayed, bridling his chest, "who's _already_ perfect." 

Rotor chortled, but Sally and Snively, locked in a crucial moment, in the formation of a pledge of respect and trust, did not hear the quip. "I do not demand impossible achievements—you are my peer, not my slave," she plowed firmly on, sowing her seeds of camaraderie, remembering his face when he was laboring over Nicole. "And I compliment my peers far more often than I criticize them. The work you've done already is outstanding." Then a register of warning and authority dominated her tone. "_Keep it up_." She handed the papers that he had thrust into her arms back to him. 

Still he stared at her; still he did not understand. Trying to conceal awkwardness with petulance, he folded his skinny arms across his chest. To her astonishment, moisture built rapidly in his eyes—tears of relief. "Does this mean I'm not in _trouble_?"

Again Sally laughed. "Go back to bed, Snively. You earned it." 

His lip twitched. "I . . . what? Did you say I . . ."

"Earned it. Deserved it. However you want to put it."

One abrupt laugh tumbled out his throat; a raw, pure, gutteral noise of beautiful discovery. He began to meander away from the company. "You're telling me I did a good job? A _good job_. My God. _Can't _be. I must be delirious . . ." 

And he pivoted to face them, wringing hands. It was as if their kindness only brought him more anguish. "I'm _Snively Kintobor_, don't you recall? Snively Kintobor was born to screw things up. You've made a mistake. It's been _all night_, I tell you. I should be done—I _could_ be done!" 

But Sally just smiled back undaunted and repeated her demand that he retire to bed. He nodded, turned stiffly away, his mind swept beyond her access with this new serendipity. Gnawing on his fingernails, he hobbled away to his hut. Still he mumbled, voice a mixture of childlike wonder and cynical mirth: "I'm dead. This is heaven. By unanimous agreement of the authorities, I did a _good job_. Hot damn."

Bunnie watched him leave intently. "Good will is a hard dish to digest at first, ain't it?"

Rotor patted her bionic arm. "He'll come around."

I was afraid you'd hit me if I'd spoken up . . . 

I was afraid of verbal daggers I was afraid of the

Calm before the storm I was afraid for my own 

Bones I was afraid of your seduction I was afraid 

Of your coersion I was afraid of your rejection 

I was afraid of your intimidation I was afraid of 

Your punishment I was afraid of your icy silences

I was afraid of your volume I was afraid of your 

Manipulation I was afraid of your explosions

I have as much rage as you have

I have as much pain as you do

I've lived as much hell as you have

And I've kept mine bubbling under for you

You were my best friend . . . 

You were my mentor . . .

You were my partner

You were my teacher . . .

You were my keeper 

You were my anchor

You were my family 

You were my savior

And therein lay the issue

And therein lay the problem"

--Alanis Morissette

But he hadn't come around. Not _that_ night. No, that night, as _every_ night before it, he allowed himself to be swallowed whole by forces that relished guilt and ridicule. Forces that spurred the desire for fury and self mutilation. That filled the throat with blackness until it was gagged upon.

Snively hardly shut the door of his hut that afternoon, barely tumbled over the piles of printouts, data chips, and screwdrivers that littered his floor . . . before the scream escaped him. He stumbled to his bed and seized his down pillow: muffling the awful, strangled shriek in it, wishing to hell and back that he had the nerve to suffocate himself. It was hate filling the pit of his gut, contempt and disgust for the people who were determined to open his spirit's blood clots with their compassion. Did they sense the damage they did? Was this a perverted way to _torture_ him? No. They had _no concept_ of cruelty. Which only made him feel twice as wretched. He'd thought of provoking them, of breaking curfew, spitting in the face of a child, sabotaging one of Rotor's dangerous power tools and defacing the walls of his hut. Something to justify their disdain again, to renew that one comforting constant of his existence: his own _worthlessness._ Yes, it would be so much easier to bear if only they punished him, if only he were too oppressed to focus on atoning his own crimes. Too lost.

He searched the loose wooden board under his bed, and found the tiny bottle of liquor he'd filched from that angry ass, Geoffrey. . . yes, already he'd disobeyed his new benefactors, and it gave him a small measure of comfort. Maybe he even sought to vex the skunk in particular, because he knew he could rely on St. John for that safely monotonous cruelty. Maybe he even hoped Geoffrey would find the bottle missing, so he could be under another's fist again. So he could pity only _himself_ again. 

__

God, but I'm sick. _Sick and stupid. Coward._

Snively snorted at himself, rolling his eyes to soften the blow of the truth. He uncorked the bottle and downed half of it without a breath, gagging on the burning in his throat: Painful it was, but it blurred the shadowy figures swirling madly on his ceiling and in his soul. A lopsided grin curled up his lip; the numbness he'd taken for granted returned to embrace him. Again he gulped it, filling his gut with liquid apathy until he thought he'd burst. He giggled idly, tossing it aside, and stumbled on his back. Fresh, clean sheets offended his nostrils; he missed the filth and grime and smoky haze of the city. Angrily he tossed on his side, clutching the rudely pleasant linen, tangling it in his fingers. He imagined the mass in his hands to be the necks of half of bloody Knothole Village.

His thoughts, as ever when he was gorging on his blackness, flew to dear Uncle Julian. To the beloved liar. 

__

Oh, yes, he hurt me. He killed me. But then again. . . I handed him the dagger, didn't I? He pictured a great crimson mark painted on his own gaunt chest, guiding uncle to the focus of his prey. _X marked the spot. Yes. And I knelt down and took it. . . . didn't I? _I_ killed me. _

I'll never_ escape him. . . _

Will I?

I AM him. I am a monster—a menace. I ought to be purged. In some contorted fashion, he _did_ care for the Freedom Fighters, his saviors—he knew the _loss _of _him_ would be _their gain_ . . . . 

Snively awoke hours later, when darkness flooded the windows of his hut, head swimming with the same tumultuous thoughts. He belched back some of the alcohol, gripped by nausea and aching head. But despite his misery, he was at once certain of what he must do. Immediately he had a purpose, a solution to the black tunnel with no light. He had already known that morning, after Sally had praised him. He had already known, deep down, when he'd seen his escape resting on the wooden table in the corner of Rotor's hut. 

He lurched heavily upright, felt for another forbidden treasure under his pillow, and wandered outside with it, into the coldness before dawn.

Several minutes passed before he found himself climbing the side of steep hill that separated Knothole from the rest of the Great Forest. Near it was a handcrafted elevator and lever, meshed with thick vines for pulley ropes. Too afraid to be caught in his solitude to use the thing, he continued to clamber up the slope. Finally he stood surveying the village that had, only months ago, been his beacon. The few lit windows of the huts twinkled before his eyes like renegade fireflies. Part of him still wanted so much to be privy to the glowing secret that those sensitive, intuitive animals shared. _Privy to their legendary camaraderie_. And another part of him wanted to blot out every light he saw; with his avenging thumb he tried to do so, so that he'd no longer have something wonderful and warm to jealously compare with his miserable existence. Finally he gave up; no matter how much he tried, they _still_ shone bravely on.

Snively smelled his own breath, rank with the liquor, and suddenly despised himself even more. He drew the laser pistol, a tiny, shining terror which had embedded within its cold metal skeleton more destructive power in one shot than a cannon. It had been so easy to filch from benevolent, cluelessly kind old Rotor's workshop that afternoon. Several times, his fingers trembling, he tried to press it against his temple, but found himself only capable of reaching his neck. At last he let it slip through his fingers and strike the ground. He could not do it. _Coward._

He breathed a deep, sick-hearted sigh and gazed at the cliff edge, the Ring Pool below serenely mirroring the moon.

Oh, he wished, wiping the sticky sweat of anxiety from his brow, wouldn't that be nice? To simply swim in the moon, to bathe in that cool light carefree, detached from the world. 

Detached from all sorrow and guilt, and self-loathing. And from the nightmares, the nightmares every evening after his eyes closed, of _him_. HIM—the giant with his red eyes and his open hands bent on destruction, and his hunger to hurt. The giant who would _always_ own him. The giant named Julian Kinto—

No. Never to repeat that name. Never to think it again.

But why not? He could think it now, summon all the demons of the universe, but now he was going to escape to where they could not have him. He could conjure that damned name as much as he wanted now. _Julian Julian Robotnik Julian Robotnik Robotnik Robotnik nothing stopping me now Julian aren't you mad I'm calling you Julian instead of sir I hate you you great fat fool you can't get me Julian you robbed me of my goodness Robotnik you were my hero Julian you killed them Robotnik you killed ME. . . .mememememe . . . _

Snively licked his chapped, brittle lips. "Yes," he breathed, a ghost of apathy. "I think I shall take a sojourn to the moon. . . for a time . . ." 

He rose to his feet, shivering with a mixture of misery and bliss as the night breeze fingered through his hair and kissed his aching body. He removed his shirt, exposing gaunt, goose-bumped hide to that exquisite, cool calm. 

And then he walked to the edge, or rather floated to it, for he no longer cared that he was relinquishing his life—he rather anticipated it.

Then when he really reached the edge, a distant memory came like a cry of warning to his head—two grateful golden eyes and lanky gray arms outstretched, a wet black nose, a Mobian puppy's embrace, and his forgotten words "You saved my life—surely goodness follows you" echoed louder and louder until it threatened to crack open the human's skull. It was as if some force beyond his power had thrust the memory in his mind's past at his moment of utter despair.

__

Sprocket.

A surge of dizziness and nausea, as if to thwart him deliberately, overcame him, and he was seized by grief and terror. Gold eyes, gratitude, faith in goodness so meagerly dealt . . . 

Snively expelled a quick, aborted scream. Some force of providence yet equipped him with the miraculous power to resteady himself.

Yet he was determined; and so he had just regained his resolve and lifted one foot, vision blurred with bitter tears, when the softest of voices from memory came; it was that gravelly, gentle tenor of the dog with the outstretched arms, calling his name. "Snively . . ."

Then it changed. It became a voice of the present, a compassion of the present. A woman's high, husky voice. "Snively! Well, I _do_ declare—_Colin Junior_!"

The utterance of his real name withdrew him sharply from his trance. "What?" he snapped, whipping around. But his harsh demeanor could hardly disprove the tear stains that still streaked across his face.

There stood Bunnie Rabbott, in a wet bathing suit. Evidently, she had been out for a late-night swim at the nearby lake when she heard his distressed cry. Damn these hero-types. 

He first read her countenance, partially concealed behind a soaked lop ear, as annoyed, but then her eyes trailed to the ground and observed the discarded gun . . . and his perilously located being. She drew her towel around her and queried, "What are you doing?"

By the tremor in her voice he knew she already had a very clear idea of his intentions.

"What does it matter to you?" He grunted, turning away, half-irritated and half-relieved by her intrusion.

"Come away form there!" The Mobian's voice rose an octave with the abrupt demand, and a decibel, somewhere between the volume of normal conversation and agitated shouting.

"Oh, screw off, kid," he moaned.

But Bunnie was resolute. "I . . . I had hoped I'd find ya still awake. I ran into someone I think you'd be . . . glad . . . to see."

The branches of a nearby squat blackberry bush shuddered; out from among them, that enigmatic ram, Ari, strode, arms parted. "That's right. I've just apprehended and interrogated a Robian. He seems harmless, but I require your unique knowledge—I need YOU to identify him . . . Snively." 

"I don't know any Robians on a personal basis!" Snively snapped, twice as embarrassed, now, for being caught in a moment of emotional crumbling by a Knothole official. 

"Are you sure?" The ram examined his face. "He's a gray colored canine with pricked ears."

Still giving no quarter, the human scowled at the ground. But he was drawing himself away from the promontory.

Ari persisted. "If you don't identify the captive, the king will have him executed as a Robotropilan spy. Think well on your decision, Snively. Let's see, what else? Oh, yes. The captive told me to remind you of . . . the, ah . . . the Christmas' lights?"

Something ignited in Snively's eyes. They retreated to some deeper part of his being. "Oh my God," he breathed.

"Ah," the ram grinned, "bingo."

****

Winter 3222, Megacentral (Overlander Stronghold)

__

There would be pain.

He could feel it already. The churning in his belly, something like the five minutes preceding a child's piano recital, the blinding lights of the stage, the stiff tuxedo with the strangling collar, the roaring clamor of the audience. The scrutiny. The impulse to urinate all over oneself. The exposure—the exposure of all things vulnerable. That was what was coming now.

Sprocket supposed that it hadn't been one of Snively's brightest notions to dig his family's Christmas lights from the attic of his father's mansion stronghold—to then, of all things, invite Sprocket over to decorate the titanic pine tree under which they'd first met. And, at all times, within the hour that Colin Sr. returned daily from his post at the government ministry building, where his prestige as Chief Justice and war veteran were marked-- unlike his parenting skills. 

But Snively had been uncharacteristically joyful that afternoon, his cheeks unusually flushed and his voice bearing an optimistic lilt, so Sprocket hadn't the heart to caution the human against their holiday festivities. He'd fought, gently and loyally, for years to get through his friend's impenetrable defensive shell of ice and grit, to grasp at Snively's trust, and he wouldn't let anything destroy what seemed, finally, an emotional triumph. 

So they chortled over dirty preteen boy jokes, sang hopelessly tone-deaf carols, and strung the tree top to bottom with gaudy old electrical lights. Earning himself a skeptical look, Snively claimed they had been an Overlander tradition since archaic times, in what was known as the "Western" part of the old human world. "Or if you want to be Jewish, they're for the Festival of Lights. Or, let's see, if you're a Hindu," he added to the canine, who was already sold, "you could call them Diwali lamps!" Sprocket had been laughing too hard to argue, and, fearing for his comrade's safety—for Snively was standing on his shoulder s trying to get the last strand over the top of the tree, and the icy, white earth made it hard to support him without slipping. "You have incredible recall," he chuckled, "to know all the nuances of all those celebrations from so long ago." 

"Oh, shut up," Snively grunted, as ever awkward with compliments. "Doesn't matter to me which one you pick, as long as we get a chance at one."

"One what?"

"One celebration, genius!" Snively's tone reeked of good-natured sarcasm. Sprocket knew that meant his friend was delighted, but, for fear of seeming childish, trying to hide it. "Aaah," he grinned, "I see."

It was pure joy for two otherwise forsaken children.

He had no idea how long Snively's father had been watching them. But he saw the man's face, and understood it immediately, when he turned and glanced at the path from the house. Colin stood there, straddle-legged and hunch-shouldered, his jaw agape, in the snow. The beauty of the scenery, of the moment, was immediately polluted.

For the act to merit such a murderous, revolted look from his friend's father, now, as they stood in the snow, their forbidden friendship finally learned, he couldn't fathom. 

Somehow he felt no hate for the man who'd gunned down his parents, neither fear—not, at least, for himself. For himself, he felt . . . nothing. Numbness for his parents' killer—for the furless creature who had mistaken his parents for Mobian troops . . .pulled out his gun . . . and . . . and . . . nothing. 

But he felt fear for Snively. For the boy's father, that toweringflame-haired "Minister of Justice," was recovering from his disgusted shock--removing his belt from his overland military uniform and beginning to storm in the direction of Snively's hindside. As he walked, his shiny black boots crushed the unstrung Christmas lights under him, shattering them. Something equally as excruciating, as broken, emerged on the face of Sprocket's human friend. His arms flopped to his sides and his head drooped. 

And the canine knew that all he'd drawn from Snively in the past several years had been crushed as well. It was then, not before, that he finally began to feel rage towards Colin Sr. That he began to understand what real rage even was. God, no. I've lost him. Please, God, no.

"Come here, boy," the man finally addressed his son. He was still brandishing the belt. "It seems you've forgotten yourself." Indeed.

Snively set his jaw, clenched his fists. His eyes glittered. Not with rage or even fear, but with the luster of a cadaver—hopeless but hideously bright. Coated with a kind of "what-the-hell" defiance. Then as he spoke, they regained a terrifying vitality, sparking with thousands of volts of electricity. They were truly disturbing. "No," he hissed. "No, father, I will not. And I have not."

"Sir," Sprocket tried to intercede. "Your Honor, please let me explain." To plead to deaf ears. 

He took two strides forward, but Snively fixed that arctic stare on him and growled one word in a tone bordering on rabid: "Stay!" Then, gentler, "Stay, Sprocket. Stay back." 

And Sprocket withdrew. Yes, I've lost him.

"I don't know what this. . .this thing is," Colin spat, his voice rich and thunderous, and awful. Apparently referring to Sprocket, for his finger was pointed at the canine, "And I don't know why you are associating with it, boy, but your impudence is clear! Your . . . your blatant disregard for patriotism, for. _. . for the tenets of our society! It's almost too much to bear! I can only hope that a respite from the company of that foul, radical uncle of yours, that fool that I'm quite glad I banished, will drive these notions out of your brain--associating with this brute, this . . .this animal! Well, you can thank It for earning you a good solid reprimand!"_

And he had dragged Snively to the other side of that very tree that had hailed the beginning of a friendship between warring worlds, and ordered his son to bend over. Sprocket could hear the leather on flesh as clear and sharp as a crow's call, and the accompanying stifled whimpers. He would not leave, though. No. Numbly as before, he stooped and gathered the shards of colored glass, poured them into the sack in which the strands had been stored, and waited. Ten minutes later 30 lashes had been delivered and the two humans had returned. They spoke, the elder preaching with arms on the younger's thin shoulders, while the younger's face was downcast and pained, as if Sprocket were no longer present. 

He knew it. Her knew there would be pain. But perhaps not the lasting kind . . . 

"You may apologize, disown this friend' of yours, and be pardoned, or expect to be disowned by me just as I have disowned your beloved Julian," Colin snarled, hateful mockery seeping into his remark of Snively's banished uncle. Then his voice spiked to a roar. "Are you sorry NOW?" 

Snively did not waste time. "No," he retorted calmly, through his teeth, though his voice quivered and his eyes were wet. "I am not sorry. You're the one who should be sorry."

"What the blazes are you talking about? Stop crying!"

"I am not crying." Uttered in the same flat voice.

The father scoffed cruelly, pulling away. "It's no wonder that nickname of yours has stuck. You certainly do your share of snivelling." 

_A new register of hatred in the voice. "You gave it to me, dad. You did it. " He looked at Sprocket, who felt his own eyes begin to flood. "Not me."_

"Alright, boy, that's enough out of you! You willingly relinquish your citizenship here? I can give you a second chance. You're a minor, after all. You can either apologize or go join your uncle in the toilet bowl of the Mobian mainland—with Max Acorn and the other beasts." 

__

Snively nodded at the belt his father was still holding. "Harder," he breathed. And he sneered. It was a smirk that made his father's skin crawl. 

"All right," Colin croaked. 

Was it remorse Sprocket saw on his face? 

"Fine, boy. If that is what you really want. We cannot harbor usurpers and traitors in the Kintobor household. Or in the Overland empire." He swallowed. Hard. 

Were those tears in his eyes? 

"Go home. I'll see to it that your discharge papers are signed. After that, Snively, you must understand, you will have been exiled. There will be no returning, no starting over. There will be no second chance_."_

Snively nodded. "Story of my life,"_ he breathed. He did not look at Sprocket as he passed him, and hobbled gingerly, for his hide surely ached, down the path. _

Colin turned wearily to Sprocket. All of his fury, it seemed, had withered. He opened his mouth to speak. "You don't understand, sir," the canine tried again. His eyes spilled over. "He saved me. Your son saved me!" 

"I understand," the human said. "But it is not the way of things. Just go home, dog. Just take your fleas and leave." 

So Sprocket returned to his foster home, a family of goats, whose plucky son was named Griff. But this was not his home. He didn't have a home anymore.

Snively did not go home that night, either. He did not go to his room. He never came back—he just kept walking until he'd crossed the border. The next time Sprocket saw Snively Kintobor, he had already sold his soul to his Uncle Julian. To Robotnik.

****

Early Spring 3235, Knothole

That was fifteen? No, more like sixteen years ago. But he had nothing better to do at the moment than reminisce. And he didn't seem to have much control over _which_ memories tainted his stream of consciousness. 

Either way, there was no reason not to cling to the joy of the half hour preceding the catastrophe. It was how one hoped to survive.

But _was_ he surviving? Was he still _alive_, even?

Perhaps the person who was the subject of Commander Sprocket 9000's rendez-vous could answer that question for him. Perhaps.

The question was to be confronted that moment. 

Three fellow robots, built by Robotnik, and never having experienced the pleasure or pain of organic existence, accompanied the canine. They were chattering incessantly, standing in a circle nearby, perhaps to alleviate their fear. Several months ago Sprocket had fled Robotropolis as a deserter, and these poor fools had finally decided to join him. Their skills of incognito far less polished than the dog's, they had clumsily flailed themselves into Knothole and, in a brainless act of recognition, called him by the name . . . in front of a crowd of apple-picking robot-hating furries. It had jerked them, and Sprocket alongside, out of the safety of hiding . . . and right into the King's custody. But Ari, ever the unconventional and reconsidering mind, had spoken on their behalf, and suggested that one Knothole dweller might be able to advocate them—to confirm their claims of desertion. That person was Snively.

And that person approached the four of them now, wet, shirtless, and shivering, but still a fearful creature to behold. His jaw was set; he hadn't seen them in clear moonlight yet, but those vicious eyes were gleaming, and Ari, with Bunnie in tow, was directing him near.

The conversation of the three robots trailed like a whistling teakettle bereft of steam, and stopped in an incredulous wheeze. "It's HIM!" the rooster, who was the tallest of the buffoons, and who perhaps maintained a sand grain's more intellect that the other two, warbled. And with that he flung himself behind the steadfast frame of Sprocket. The others, a blue mole and a monkey, quickly followed; the canine only rolled his eyes and smiled, for his mind and heart were focused on someone else.

Ari signaled for Snively to stop roughly seven feet from the robots in the shadows. "The captives will now present themselves," he thundered, "for identification."

Sprocket stepped forward. "I am prepared for identification," he called, raising a hand. A knot curled in his metallic stomach, one that he thought a creature of mesh and circuitry incapable of possessing. 

How wrong he was. 

For something was beginning to change on the face of the robot standing across from him, the creature of flesh and blood who had possessed a robot's soul . . . for the past eleven years. 

That which was external was irrelevant to that which was internal . . . and that which was internal . . . could be CHANGED.

The brainless three who had followed the canine to Knothole shuffled up behind Sprocket but dared not speak. 

And Snively, it seemed, COULDN'T. Quite readily those electric eyes had melted to fond recognition. His torso leaned towards Sprocket, but something invisible tethered his feet, restrained him from approaching any nearer the creature of his simpler past. Only a wordless strangled noise escaped his lips.

The ram cast the Overlander and the Robian whom he so intently had observed a sidelong glance. "Yes, I THOUGHT you two would recognize each other," he murmured. "But could you give an I.D. to make it official?" He drew an electronic notepad from his utility belt and readied his fingers for typing.

Snively's head was shaking rhythmically from left to right. But it seemed he'd again acquired the capacity for words. "His name . . . his name is Sprocket Apollo. He left the city shortly after my . . regime. . . came into power. He's my . . . he . . . whatever he is, he's not a spy. He's . . . incapable of cruelty. He's not like . . . me."

"I see." Ari chose not to respond to the human's self-beration. "Well, that's congruent with our previous interrogation. We'll see about getting you your citizenship, Mr. Apollo." 

Sprocket nodded, but didn't really seem to hear. "Hello, old friend." Childlike wonder in his voice. "So you remembered. You REMEMBERED."

Snively swallowed. "We try to forget the BAD things, Sprocket," he croaked, "not the GOOD things."

"But it doesn't always work out that way," Bunnie's perceptive words slid into the dialogue, making both men wince with remembered pain.

"No." Snively shook his head frenziedly. "No, some of us can't forget anything." He took a first step towards his friend, anguished eyes indicating his hideous unspoken transgression. "Not ANYTHING. Not ever."

"How many times do I have to say you're forgiven?" Frustration, now, furled Sprocket's metallic eyebrows, and his yellow-gold eyes, unique from the smoldering red of all other robots, began to glow. "Until we both DIE?"

Muteness again seized Snively.

Divine intervention came in a comical form, breaking the ice. "Hello, Master Kintobor," the rooster, his long slender neck stretching over Sprocket's shoulder, waved meekly at Snively. 

A fainter chime of, "Greetings, Lord Snively, sir," followed. They belonged unmistakably to two other lackeys of Robotnik's, the sole cause of Snively's every past migraine headache: the squat, dull robotic mole named Grounder and the pugnacious, manic robotic monkey named Coconuts. Both peeked from each side of Sprocket; none of the three had any clue how conspicuous a mass of metal they were, all cringing behind the brave canine bot's frame, all shivering at their former slavedriver, a man still alive, still ice-eyed. 

Those three foolish, silly creatures had little sense but also not a wicked circuit in their bodies; they comprised Robotnik's very first attempt at post-coup artificial intelligence research. The tyrant built them from spare SWATbot and hover unit parts, and, upon realizing their immense failure as malicious agents of destruction, demoted them to tasks assigned the most expendable of robots—usually frontline duties against Sonic and Tails when the two furries were on scouting missions. Out of pure generosity, Snively grew certain, the hedgehog and fox countlessly spared the reincarnated Three Stooges from an otherwise unpleasant fate. Appropriately, among the ranks, the three were soon coined the nickname "Badniks."

"Evening, boys." Snively nodded. "Ari, these . . . gentlemen . . . are Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts. Born' and bred in Robotropolis. But you'd have to be a complete cretin to believe they posed ANY threat to Knothole." 

Ari chuckled. "Duly noted, I assure you," he retorted, typing into the notepad, trying to hide his grin. Bunnie, too, suppressed a giggle.

Snively blew air through his teeth. "It seems I've set a trend," he added warily. 

"Yes," Sprocket replied, grateful for a change of subject. "We are four of many others who would wish to defect since the reign of Naugus began, had they the courage." He shifted weight from one foot to the other, his sleek silver body glistening in the moonlight. "So I hear you're burning the midnight oil trying to figure a deroboticizer mission. Best idea you've had in years, Snively."

Robotnik's nephew paled; the remark, to him, was a direct assault at his single most appalling crime—that against the creature who stood here now, forgiving him. 

And Sprocket's words again blew up in his face as the human began to grovel. "Oh, Sprocket," Snively wrung quivering hands across the surface of his face, as he sunk on his knees and drew a ragged breath, instantly losing composure. "What do you want me to _do_? I was wrong—I was a wicked wretch! A coward! Yes, until we die, that's my answer, until we BOTH DIE! I could spend my whole life finding ways to prove I'm sorry, but it would never be enough, not really, not enough to really express . . ."

"Shut up." Sprocket's hand snapped up, palm outstretched. "Don't you get it? I missed you, moron," he grunted, subduing a smile as best he could. Finally the force field of alienation was broken; he crossed the clearing in three strides and enveloped his friend and surrogate brother in his arms. 

Without a barrier between their synthetic hides and the natural world of their enemies, Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts fled wailing behind a massive oak tree.

Unheeding, and stunned at Sprocket's compassion, Snively went rigid against the embrace. Not with disgust or hesitation, but rather as if his body, his very being, had grown so frozen, so numbed and unaccustomed to emotion for so long, that a mere hug had become all but alien to him. He only stared stupidly at his old friend, violently confused. 

"No." His voice slipped beneath its lowest of depths, a flat dead pitch. Eyes glazed and grew feverish. He seized the prisoner collar about Sprocket's neck, the same that the king ordered fit over every refugee's throat. Those thin, deft, clever fingers pried at it, searching for a way to remove it. The canine's face, as his friend grappled, was one of mixed compassion and weariness. His ears pricked in the direction of the Overlander's face, for Snively was still talking, in a tone diving lower and lower, until it was a nearly indeterminable flow of droning. "No, faster, faster, help me to get his thing off—_faster_, make haste—_help_ me, so I can't ever catch up with myself. . . _I want to outrun myself, _help me to get the thing _off_. . ."

Ari made strides towards the human and dog; with one risen index finger, the canine halted him. Then a firm, gentle hand of metal clasped Snively's clawing wrists and stayed them mid-clutch. Stillness. Their eyes locked. "I have come back," Sprocket breathed, "that you may turn and _face_ then man you wish to forget. That you may have some strength to, instead, forget your _shame_." 

Snively recoiled, bucked the generous hand from him, baring his teeth at forgiveness. "You _cannot_ do that. This thing of which you speak . . . you of all people should _know_. . . damn you, it can _never_ happen." His nostrils flared with the angry lust of verbal combat; he crouched forward, hissing and spitting, so perverse a character from the repentant groveller he'd been seconds earlier, ready to fight.

But the canine would not be baited into the shouts and curses that would win Snively his self-defeat. "It can." Two heavy hands again planted on the human's shoulders. "It _will_." The trusting, loving eyes of an unforsaking brother filled the human's vision, vital and luminous even in robotization. 

It infuriated Snively, but his true rage was snuffed, and so he straightened slowly back to a standing position. His breathing deepened and slowed. But he was resolved to win. . . to _lose_. Words acquired that grating whine of years with his uncle, appealing, begging, putrid and void of dignity. "Why won't you _help_ me?" He knew what he needed. He needed his retreat, his desolation, his nonexistence. Why deny it him? He _knew_ what he needed. He needed his _cowardice_ back. 

"I _am_." One of Sprocket's hands, having been firmly clenched the whole time, opened in the wan light and dropped something cool, smooth and small into Snively's palm. The human's head snapped down; like a critical, scrutinizing laser beam, those twin azure daggers took in the treasure he'd been bestowed: several pieces of a throbbing red Christmas light. Like a shattered heart.

"Broken," the dog explained gently, finger poking at the various pieces cupped in the human's palm. "But all you need," and here he chuckled at his own pathetic but poignantly loving metaphor, "is a little _glue_ . . . if you'll just _choose_ to _use_ it." Then long-lost words came to him, the ghost of Colin Kintobor's past judgment, turned clean and fresh and supremely encouraging by a mere change of phrase, and so he concluded: "Snively, my old friend . . . _There _WILL_ be a second chance. CHOOSE it._" 

Snively could no longer clearly see the earnest face of his friend; Sprocket's eyes were focused downward, at the beloved broken light. It didn't matter; the great miserable globs of moisture in his eyes had blurred everything else that was visible already. The human succumbed to the act of kindness, and decided it fitting to return the sign of affection so freely given him. Limp arms encircling his friend's frame, he stiffly returned the squeeze. But Sprocket chuckled, approvingly, tail a-wag, so he'd done a decent job showing the brittle, starved, spent portion of love he still could conjure for his dearest of friends. The canine squeezed him back, still laughing, until he feared his ribs would crack. "Yeah, yeah." His throat closed from the dog's affection, so that his voice had gone strangely hoarse, like he was constantly gulping back something sharp and painful, something _not_ borne of a too-tight hug. Still he restrained it. He pushed the canine away, only softer now, playfully. "Al-_right_. . . I missed you too, _ass-head_. Welcome to the den of our foes."

"Your FORMER foes," Bunnie corrected, winking.

"Is that a promise?" Scratch whimpered, still cowering with Grounder and Coconuts behind the oak.

But there was one more confrontation to undergo before the evening was to close. 

"I came as soon as I heard," Princess Sally's commanding voice pierced the obscurity of night. She appeared in the warm glow of the canopy night lamp; the ethereal whites of her nightgown, made discrete by a lace-trimmed pink robe, complimented the structure's pearly curved roof well. Not a trace of exhaustion betrayed itself on her ever-alert face. "Well, where are they?"

Ari clicked his tongue wryly, still dialing in a thorough report, and nodded at the huddle of human, rabbit, and Robians. "Introduce yourself to your _princess_, boys."

The robotic canine's ears flicked in the direction of the monarch's voice, ad he turned to face her. A cordial smile plastered on his face, he bowed low. "Your servant, Majesty." The smile broadened to showcase his rows of fangs—thankfully the act was not meant to be aggresive. "I _do_ hope you no longer possess a reason to electrically shock the living _daylights_ out of me." 

Snively winced.

Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts let out a harmony of whines, whimpers, and sobs.

Sally did not heed. Her expression, far less temperate than Sprocket's, was one of acute surprise. "You!" she gasped. "The Robian guard in the alley . . . _months ago_! And you had the gall to come hide out _here_? But you were . . ."

"I was _protecting _a _friend_ who once gave me back my _life_," the dog cut her off gently as he could. He rose a palm, slowly resting it over his chest. "I swear it was, and is, my only cause. As is yours, to _your_ friends, Highness: As is your loyalty, and your honor. It's the least we can do, _all_ of us, in these times. . . don't you think? So I . . . trust my deeds have borne _some _fruit." A statement, but it wavered over the black pit of doubt, so that it ultimately became a question, a demand for reassurance. 

Sally glanced sideways at the human in question, whose head was curiously bowed toward the earth. Snively looked as if he wanted nothing more than to vanish inside his oversized gray parolee's shirt. "We'll see," the princess breathed, "_won't_ we?"

Snively regretted ending the next day, spent exclusively with Sprocket, filling emotional chasms between them with forgiveness and understanding, indulging in a little laughter about their childhood revels. He regretted returning to facing himself. Nevertheless, as he'd finally managed to squeeze a minor role in that week's most decisive, aggressive deroboticizer mission, he was glad to grab a hold of Sonic's uncle: before the expert spy and scientific legend returned to prep the undercover intelligence operations. Robotnik's nephew wanted to make sure he wasn't missing anything: At the beginning of the past year, he'd witnessed Sonic and Sally's first attempts at snagging parts from under uncle's nose to build a deroboticizer, all coinciding with Julian's absurd VR shriekbot trials . . . amid Julian's tantrums and threats, Snively'd still caught wind of Bunnie's and Chucks' derobotizations, . . .and ultimate reversions to their painfully false, alien physical state. It became a threatening bedtime story among the ranks—"don't even think of defecting, of betraying your beloved despot," Packbell had been gleeful to snarl at his fellow subcommanders, "because it WON'T pay off!" No, Snively had not forgotten, these past few months, about the temporary state of the primitive deroboticizer, about the different models and altered deroboticizer programs, about his uncle's rage that attempts had been made to defy his iron will . . . and why, five years after the coup, the first roboticizer had been destroyed--why a new prototype was recoded with parts compatible ONLY with a derobiticizer of a _temporary_ state . . . 

So that Sprocket could never be deroboticized. But there was more. Oh, so much more. So much cruel FORESIGHT: Old Julian was smarter than he looked. It was doubtless that not _only_ Snively was taunted in the act, and denied his only true, forgiving friend, but that the _Freedom Fighters_, too, had been lured, DARED, to try and take components from the new roboticizer to build their counterattack—deliberately lilted into a sense of false hope that was to be dashed utterly. Yes, such was Uncle's style.

But the old prototype, the old robotcizer, and its parts . . still he was certain the old code was somewhere, the code that would be a PERMANENT fix for Sprocket, for Sir Charles, for Bunnie. The code from the first primitive robotizations of the coup itself. Thus a monster could become a savior. 

. . . But he also knew, far too well by now, how blind his role as the tyrant's lackey had been: how blind to the scarlet red sins of his own being. The anguish, the struggles of his new companions. He needed to know more than what his one tainted, narrow view offered. 

He needed to make sure he wasn't deliberately forgetting things. Painful, gruesome things—like red-stained hands deliberately thrust into the darkness of his conscience's trouser pockets. Because . . .it seemed. . . well, it seemed as if there had to be another catch . . . something else that was HIS fault. 

He found Sir Charles rummaging through the Bermuda Triangle and yet the Hades that was Rotor's hut floor. He had intended to enter inconspicuously and wring his hands and bite his nails—and thus slowly muster the courage to address the renowned martyr of the coup one-on-one. Instead, he tripped over a wayward (and he was convinced, conspiratorial) pile of ball bearings. They pitter-pattered irritably about the wooden floor like a shower of firework sparks. 

Thus, as Sonic's uncle pivoted on his heel, mildly alarmed, and beheld Snively and his mess of metal in confusion, the human's supremely cool, collected greeting turned out to be: "Oops."

Feeding Snively's starved gratitude, the hedgehog grunted a dismissive chuckle and waved a glistening robotic arm. "Not vital, my boy, fear not. It only adds more character to this disaster, don't ya think?" He shrugged at, barely discernible in the poor yellow lighting of the hut, a junkpile of glass, chrome, iron, platinum and metal, but even his humor seemed weighted with a faint sort of regret. A sentiment that Snively immediatly recognized. But it faded when he realized Snively's lips were poised to voice an urgent question. "What brings you here?" 

"Sir Charles, I think I should. . ."

"Call me Uncle Chuck. Like—"

"I know, I know." Snively sighed wearily. " Like everyone else does.' I already went through that with Sally." He snorted. "Seems I've poor instincts with names. The last uncle' I knew threatened my LIFE if I ever called him anything but SIR." He rubbed an arm until the skin reddened, raw.

The face of the former Science minister, despite his roboticized complexion, acquired an unmistakable wryness—and a grudging compassion. "I'm certain I understand just who might have said such a thing to you. I think you've made me twice as glad to have what my own nephew and I share, Snively. But FORGET Robotnik. Tell me, son, what troubles you?" 

The words poured out the human's lips like rancid soup. "I . . . I know why your derobotizations were only _temporary_. The old roboticizer that you buil--ah. . . that my _uncle used _to get to you, and Bunnie_. . . _he deactivated it, sir, years later: But it's not the children's fault, they were still barely ten years old when he did it, so they had no way of. . . . " Snively sighed angrily, realizing he was rambling to the point of incoherence. "You see, the old roboticizer's code is archived somewhere, probably in the mainframe computer, and a newer model is being used, the one you tried to use tobut it's the OLD one that has the parts that—it's, let's see. . ." He clutched the side of his skull as if the effort of long lost remembrance were a migraine. ". . . Parts I, 2, 3 and 5, yes, I'm sure it was those--they were altered to make derobotization temporary. B- but if you can find that file with the old prototype's instructions, you can use it to fix this mess for _good_--"

"Peace! Peace, m'boy, I _know_." The old man smiled at the boy's shock. "By the Mountains of Maga, how you DO chatter! Listen, your friend has already confided in me—with more than a little ill-placed shame. Typical of Julian, don't you think?" He stepped around a pile of monkey wrenches. "Typical to prey on good people and turn his crimes into theirs." He glanced in a nearby mirror, rust-coated and cracked, but it was plain that his own demons still chased him—the demons that reminded that he had built the roboticizer that Julian had sabotaged and corrupted: That his good intentions had become the tool of another man's sadistic greed.

Atypically, Snively was able to read a soul, rather than be preoccupied with his own, like crystal. "Sir. . . Uncle Chuck. . . surely you know this isn't YOUR fault either. You can't know how the gifts you offer might be abused." 

The old legend turned from the mirror to face Snively, grateful for the interruption. "That's the wisest thing I've heard you say, young man. I wonder—have you been able to pardon _yourself_ as you have so _readily_ pardoned _me_?"

Snively's fingernails dug into his palms until the familiar, comforting sting grounded his reeling head. He sighed. "It is easier to forgive a man who has _not_ sinned than a man who has made unkindness his_ career_. I can _not_ offer myself what I do not deserve, as you and yours _can_. The better I am treated, the more acceptance you. . . It . . . it only makes this fate of mine a _worse_ burden to bear." He stepped closer to the old hedgehog, in whose crimson eyes had lit a kind of wry comprehension. Perhaps even a kindred spirit. The human shrugged his shirtsleeve down and began wiping at the mirror; his image, and Chuck's, grew sharp—pretending no soft edges for each flaw and quirk in their faces. Revealing them. He gestured at his own reflection, shrugging at his putrid existence. "It makes it hurt more knowing the _truth_."

"Ah, but are you sure it _is_ the truth? Or do you take too much debt on your conscience for something that _isn't_ in your hands?" 

Snively grew nervous, hedging towards the door and the warming, ebbing sunlight above the trees outside. "Pardon me, but I didn't come here to discuss _myself_. I came here to discuss tonight's strategies—"

Chuck dangled a chrome finger in the small space between them, silencing Snively, and rooting his feet into the hut floor; even in the wan, dusty light, the digit glistened as brightly as his own intellect. "Snively, your wisdom ceases with one statement: Now, listen _closely,_ son: The Freedom Fighters do _not_ forgive you because you'll _ever_ deserve it. We forgive you because it is the _right thing to do_. We forgive you for _our _sake, to remove the blemish of vengeance from _our_ souls—but even more importantly, because it is our innate _right_ to forgive _whomever we choose_. CHOICE, in any matter, for any person or ideal, is the _greatest_ gift that FREEDOM can offer. And that is why we _exercise_ it when we judge our conduct towards _you._" He nodded, as a professor would indicate that his class's moral lesson was complete, and stooped back over Rotor's toolkit rummaging for a wrench. "You _hear_ me, boy? Time to _stop_ pitying yourself. Now, that's _that_." Briskly, like a man who'd accomplished a great deal, he brushed debris from his hands and retrieved the most stalwart tool he could locate, stiffly raising to his feet. He challenged Robotnik's kin to deny the order with one risen brow.

"I. . . see." Snively's eyes absorbed the words and the face of their creator, long, hard, with stony cold azure stare that calculated and measured and summed. Much as he would face the new challenge, refinement, or concept offered by repairing a new hovercraft engine or a generator battery. It was a new concept that he was prepared to accept. He glared boldly into the mirror now, daring the image that scowled back to melt into the gaunt, power hungry demon that would render his saviors' mercy in vain. He would not let it. He would accept his soul's pardon now, knowing his debt to be less than insurmountable. "Alright," he concluded. "I'll believe you." Slyness crept into his tone. "But only if you'll take your _own _advice."

The old legend chortled back, wagging that same educational finger over the boy's nose. "Okay, then, my cagey young assistant," he surrendered, "it's a _deal_!" He hunkered down at a newfound pile of scrap metal and began fishing again for treasures. "Now, back to business. . . and that would be . . . " He frowned, conked on his head a few times, as if his teeming, endless intellect were so vast, it required a bit of stimulus to be organized. "Ah, yes," he finally brayed, with a loud, boisterous charm that both did and didn't fit at his age, "tonight's mission, right?"

"Yes, sir." Snively could not suppress a wry grin; it was clearer to him every day how much of Chuck was reflected in Sonic, and he was beginning to think it more endearing than irritating.

"Feeling pretty good that the princess will finally let you help out at the _real _frontline, I'll bet?"

"Indeed, sir." Uttered with an unconvincing strain of anxiety. Snively's craven voice broke on "sir."

"Good!" Chuck chortled, but chose not to point out what might embarrass the young human yet more. Yet another aspect of his personality that Snively, all but alien to another living creature's emotional sensitivity, dearly admired. "I'm afraid you'll be doing a lot of sitting around tonight, son. You and the others will go to the edge of the city, under the cover of the remaining foliage. About a couple hours before the operation starts, your pal Sprocket and I have resolved to infiltrate Central Command as robot spies. I'll have to put on somesuch metal costume, filch a workerbot shell or something else that Robotnik has not yet detected as malignant." Snively drifted for an instant, remembering well the day that Robotnik had caught Chuck as the very first successful Mobian spy in his regime. However much he had hated the old hedgehog then, and been gleeful to turn him in for his own uncle's meager praise, he had still felt a small twinge of joy at ANYONE'S ability to rattle Julian's cage. He shook himself, returning to the very improved present. Chuck continued. "But _Sprocket_, as far as _those_ two tyrants know, is still a loyal and valued commander of the city. He would make the _perfect_ living bug. We'll probably be setting up our base inside some covert structure—the sewage systems, the workerbot factory lines, a Hoverbot or patrol pod. . ."

"Or the _air ducts_," Snively volunteered, as mildly as he could, eager to prove he was following both sharply and competently. With his enthusiasm to learn, he tried to distract himself from the gnawing fear of Sprocket getting hurt on the dangerous assignment—cleaning up _Snively's_ mess yet again. 

"Those too, perhaps," Chuck nodded, and for a moment, paused to scratch his chin, another useless but die-hard habit of the flesh. His eyes glowed red with thought. " . . . Yes, those too. I don't know, maybe. But in any case, the gist is, after an hour of listening to Naugus and . . . your uncle . . . ranting about various operations, as well as hacking into the mainframe computer for some archives on the deroboticizer, Sprocket and I will just sit tight. Sonic will depart from your backup position and find us, gather the information for what follows, and then well.depending on what we find, it's _then_ that you'll know your part in tonight's mission." He clapped his hand together with brave passion, a cross between a be-sworded Crusader and a football coach. "After that, we'll spend the night in our chosen base to confirm the intelligence info we've gathered. Sound good?"

Snively felt the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. "We'll find out soon, won't we?" he croaked.

With Sprocket hovering beside him, Snively had watched from the safe dark cove of his hut door as Sonic and Tails scurried about the underbrush in search of stray twigs and branches, as Bunnie and Antoine heaved an aromatic pile of hot dogs and marshmallows to the place where the wood was deposited, as Dulcy pursed her lips and split through the center of the choppings with a tongue of flame. He, Robotnik's nephew, hated turncoat, privy to a pre-mission Freedom Fighter campfire. A strategic gathering, minus Chuck, who had departed for Robotropolis half an hour earlier.

Perhaps the world had stopped spinning, or Julian had acquired a heart, or hell had frozen over. Something inconceivable like that.

Snively's ears were accosted by a rustling of leaves and debris, made by awkward footsteps, those he remembered as having been his own only months ago. Sprocket grinned and voiced his silent supposition: "Ah, here come Scratch and Grounder and that monkey friend of theirs. The one demoted to sanitation duty last year." 

And indeed--ushered by a push in the back from the charitable, ceaselessly maternal Rosie and Bernie--Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts rounded the corner of Snively's hut, mingling with the children and warriors of Knothole village as if they had forever been citizens. However sheepish and befuddled, the "Badniks" were as welcome in the village as harmless, adored infants—taken on their wide-eyed tour of the "evil" Sonic's world, led by the hand by the furrie toddler s who still shared their particular breed of oblivious innocence. Enjoying the forbidden, supposedly adversarial haven of their once-master's enemies, "ooing" and "aahing" every step and stumble of the way. Gleeful, even, to be breaking Robotnik's rules, like the clumsy, ornery youngsters they really were. Behind them scrambled a shiny, red-hued newcomer, the high-strung crustacean bot and Robotnik's old secretary, Crabmeat; as if terrified that the lush grounds on which he trod were all a clever, holographic illusion, he clutched his claws across his chest and attempted to shrink into invisibility. . . Until Tails approached him and dragged him closer to the gathering place, at which point he stammered his thanks and, his bugging, protruding eyes calming, even smiled. The simultaneous peace and absurdity of the sight made Snively crow a short, flabbergasted laugh. 

"Incredible, huh?" Sprocket chuckled, seeing his opportunity. "How _quickly_ things are changing for the better? How things are _mending_?"

Snively's face rapidly sobered, and blanched. He was afraid to believe, or even to acknowledge, the rose-tinted possibility. "Dulcy lit the campfire," he grunted, tugging at the canine's arm, and slouching towards his former subordinates. "We'd best get good seats, it's chilly." He clambered through some high grass near the white domed canopy, where the fire was lit; as the only textiles he could be spared were worn khaki shorts, his lean legs were exposed to the tickling, itching yellow-green stalks, and he winced, both from the stinging sensation at his ankles and the strange apprehension tightening his chest.

The canine sighed at the human's ever-evasive manner, but did not pursue the issue. Instead, as in years past, he merely followed where his friend led. They chose seats just outside the canopy, with a view of the tameless stars. Already Sally was dispatching the food and Lupe, the savagely elegant Wolf Pack chieftain, was beckoning and warmly welcoming new arrivals to the circle. It took barely five minutes before people with stories to tell, musical instruments to strum, and heartfelt laughs to throw up at the sky had flooded the canopy about the fire. Only the king was not in attendance. Snively felt safely anonymous among such a vast gathering, as dusk obscured their bodies into one communing, undulating mass by the fire; indeed, he was glad for it, for hardly any of them had yet shed their antagonism for himself and his record of brutal crimes. 

But as the main players of the mission congested in the huddle closest to the flames, their whispers grown hushed, it became inevitable that small talk would wander back to the world he'd hoped to abandon. With Coconuts and Grounder in tow, the microcosmically braver Scratch (odd it, was, since he _was_ a _chicken_) crept up to Sprocket, cautiously sidestepping Snively, for whose legendary spite he'd still not lost his decade-long fear. The fowl seemed about to change his mind and rush back to the crowd of Knotholers, but his compatriots shoved him forward. Ever-disarming in character, Sprocket did not look up from the novel he'd brought to read until Scratch was to address him. 

Finally, he did. "Hey, Sprocket?" His voice was uncharacteristically earnest. 

The robodog smiled in his welcoming manner, his deep anguished gold eyes growing warm. "Yeah, Scratch?"

". . . What's it like . . . you know . . . to be . . . _real_?"

Snively bolted rigid in his place by the fire.

As fate would have it, now was precisely the time that Sally and companions chose to return to their spots near the Robians and human. They had heard the question, and were awaiting, with some mingled interest and tension, for the reply.

For an instant Sprocket's jaw dropped; he blinked rapidly, taken vastly aback. But then the answer came, loud and clear, it seemed, in his mind, and his smile again seemed to embrace the company with its kindness. "_Terrible_!" he blurted, and then succumbed to a soft peal of chuckles. "And . . . _wonderful_," he added, with a faraway look of remembrance, a countenance both wistful and sweetly, wisely sad. 

"Oh." Scratch said it like a child who claims to comprehend an adult's words, but really understands none of them. "Oh, I see." A deep frown seized his features as he pondered the mystery of it.

"_I_ don't," Grounder admitted, earning a scowl from the rooster and an embarrassed grunt of "Shut your hole!"

Snively had begun to relax again. But Sprocket's eyes ruminated on Scratch's troubled expression. "Why do you ask, friend?" He prodded.

And the rooster looked right at Snively, not in accusation, but in fear. "Someone once told me you can only have a soul if you're alive. If you're real. So I . . . I wish I had been born instead of built."

"No, don't wish that," Tails' fresh, unspoiled voice injected. "Do you believe in a god, Scratch?"

The rooster shrugged. "Sure, I guess. Sprocket talks about Him a lot. Snively does too, but he's usually yelling at Him to send somebody to hell—you know, guys, how he goes around yelling, _God dam_—"

"_Scratch_!" Snively cut the robot viciously short, seeing Tails's eyes begin to widen, and Sally's to narrow. His cheeks flushed red. "Y-yes, I was an altar boy at my church, b-but you're, ah, um, interrupting young Miles"

Scratch winced. "Oh, yeah . . . um, sorry,Tails."

Sonic let loose a flow of snorts, apparently laughing, and slapped his thighs.

"That's okay," Tails replied, frowning at his blue idol in puzzlement. He continued, approaching Scratch boldly, eyeing him with a level gaze of dark, piercing eyes. "Anyway, I do too. You're as real as any of the rest of us, Scratch. If we were born because of God, maybe God put the idea of you into the head of the guy that built you—so you were sorta _indirectly_ born—y'know?"

"But _Dr. Robotnik_ built us," Coconuts piped in, in a voice of marked disgust.

Snively chuckled wryly. "Mmm . . . divine inspiration seeks raging despot," he quipped. "Seems a bit of a stretch, kid."

"No, Dr. Robotnik's _intellect_ wasn't evil," Tails pressed confidently. The adults, living and robotic alike, fell to silence as he spoke with wisdom beyond his years. "It was what he _did_ with it that made him _wrong_. _You're_ smart, Snively. But you're using it to _help_ us now. Does that mean _you're_ still evil?" 

The Overlander looked as if he'd received a shattering blow to the chest. He turned quite pale, bit his lip, and from then on, fell strangely silent.

Sprocket just kept smiling. "Well-said, kid," he breathed. "You just revived his conscience, something I've been trying to do for ten years." 

Sally's thoughts had strayed elsewhere, removing her from the revelation the kitsune gently provided. Presently, she moved to the center of the circle, flanked by Lupe, Geoffrey, and Ari, all of whom sported a somber look on their faces which could only indicate one thing. "Midnight--It's time to move our position to the city edge," the princess declared, "and start the tactics meeting." 

"Then perhaps I had best join Sir Charles in the city." Sprocket rose, rested a hesitant hand on Snively's shoulder, squeezed once, and then vanished in a brief burst of rocket fire and momentum into the woods. The Freedom Fighters paused to watch him go, both puzzled by and grateful for his newfound allegiance. 

And then another voice, a thunderous one that still made Snively tremble, that still made his eyes become great blue saucers of fear, rejoined, "And I bid you Godspeed on your mission. Sally, dearest, one loss, _one_ injury, and I'll exercise my paternal duties and give you a curfew. . . . "

It was the king, who stepped into the dimming firelight, tail swishing with the fervor of the statement. Snively flopped to the ground in a terrified bow, and the Freedom Fighters stood to salute their monarch. But Sally lurched towards her father, fists clenched. "Daddy, I promise there will be no need for that." The slightest quiver of anger came into her voice—the anger of one condescended. "You'll see the competence that has kept us alive while you were gone in the Void."

A moment of tension as father and daughter squared off, and the crackling of the dimming embers was the only sound—but, little surprise, somehow, to Snively, Sally won. The king sighed, took her hand tenderly and stroked it, and vanished again in the direction of the huts. Snively, previously clenching his neck with claw-bent hands, heaved such a loud gasp of relief that all heads turned in his direction and he was bombarded by a barrage of wry grins. 

"You can breathe now, Snively," Ari chortled. 

The human huffed an angry sigh. "Shut up."

The hike to the edge of the city carried, in the crisp night air, a kind of sacred communion, a collective silent communication of trust and edgy ambition. Snively was to discover two things en route, wedged between Dulcy and Geoffrey St. John, in the rear: 

One: The Freedom fighters had a peculiar code of communication that consisted of signature bird calls, frog croaks, cricket chirps, all mimicked by their skillful lips. Each understood the presence, position, and intent of the other by these noises. It was positively superb—it was why years of frustrated attempts had led Robotnik to a fruitless dozen or so captures of Knothole denizens: This was _their_ beloved landscape, and they ruled it by BECOMING it, _rather_ than forcing its hand. _Superb_.

Two: Not a sound could be made for the last quarter mile before the city limits, for the sake of avoiding a thick territory of Spy Eyes. Because Snively himself had been the one to invent his uncle's pervasive airborn intelligence units, he readily accepted the penance of discarding his shoes and walking barefoot like the rest of them. The slimy squish of mud between his toes, at first revolting, grew intensely satisfying when he realized he could, in the darkness under cover of trees, reinvent in his mind just what he was trodding upon: It could be, say, his uncle's fat belly as he danced on his bloated carcass, after slaying him. The pleasurable thought spread a wobbly, yearning sneer across his fair face. His _deceitfully_ fair, young face, a comely lid over the churning, murky moat of his heart. Snively licked his lips slowly, eyes lulled up in their sockets at the secret desire of his uncle's torture and death. Of having the power to hurt someone, to cut and rip apart someone, aside himself. _Ooohh_, yes. _Delicious_. 

His steps lagged; then Geoffrey, deliberately, Snively just KNEW, slammed into him and nearly knocked him flat on his face. Snively landed on his knees in the grime but clambered to his feet, hissing a curse. He brushed himself off and limped forward before the angry skunk could shove him again.

But Geoffrey still had his "righteous" indignation to flaunt. "Bleedin' _Crikey!_ _Would_ you keep up the _pace_, bloke?" he growled, loud enough to blow their cover utterly, his hot stinking breath boring into the human's bare neck. 

Snively shuddered with rage. But, determined to do his part well, and not to blow it, he restrained his temper and his wicked fantasies, murmured an apology, and plodded on. 

They reached a clearing at last, all pausing to gape, still in horrified awe after all the years, at the city's desolate skyline. Snively pulled back, passively aggressive, hating what he saw but not in the least shocked to see it once again, even after months of nonexposure. It still haunted his dreams. It _always_ would.

But then his new friends did something very peculiar indeed. 

Sally gestured to her companions, then, warily, to Snively, to join her . . . in the dirt of the hill overlooking the city. Calmly, one by one, the Freedom Fighters squatted down in a neat circle--then stretched out flat on their backs, on their sides or stomachs, yet all of their heads touched, so that the slightest whisper could be audible among the lot of them. It was obviously a weathered ritual, or frequent habit, among the company. Snively half-squatted at the edge of the circle, awkwardly, and cleared his throat—pleading for some sort of guidance. "Well?" he queried. 

"C'mon down here, Sugah," Bunnie prodded, in her voice of soft, sweet cotton candy, and patted the ground between herself and Dulcy, whose great tail protectively encircled the mass of Mobians. The dragon groaned, but did not outwardly protest his company, as he shrank down on his knees and slid roughly to the earth on his belly. Finding his nose perilously close to the tip of Sonic's quills (the hedgehog was lazily reclined directly across from him), the nephew of Robotnik darted back with a whimper and a hiss of "What exactly are we doing down here in the dirt, anyway?" He squirmed out of the circle, nervous and embarrassed, and fully intending to take a spot far from them. Tails and Dulcy frowned, Rotor winced, Sonic laughed and attempted to apologize for his quills, and Geoffrey, along with Antoine, grunted disgust. And Sally sighed.

Bunnie ignored every one of them. She extended her bionic arm and tugged Snively by the shoulder, kindly but firmly, back to them, reluctantly dragging feet and all. He moaned in protest, but she ignored him, and began to brush the debris off the oversized—and now stained-- shirt hanging over his chest, arms, and stomach as if he were a frail child in her care. Robotnik's nephew blushed a flame red at her sensitive and nurturing touch as she spoke: "Aw, c'mon, now, boy, what's all this fuss over a little mud? So your shirt's ruined. So what? I thought you said you used to LOVE the Great Outdoors as a lil' kid." When, sullen, he could find no strong argument to refute her remark, she continued, "Anyway, Sugah, this is our Pow Wow. Ya see, we get together at the edge of the city to plan our tactics, but we also prepare ourselves spiritually for . . .well . . . any . . ." she glanced at he arm glistening in the moonlight . . . . "any setbacks. We jes' lie down in a circle, trace the stars with our fingertips, and spill our guts to each other. About the weather, about the meal we jes' ate, about our childhood, about our hopes an' dreams. Whatever we like, but we ALL gotta talk at least ONCE. It's an exercise in intimacy among friends. It's an exercise. . . " here, pointedly, she looked in his face . . . "in TRUST."

Snively scoffed, but conceded. "Fine. I suppose that's relatively painless." He SUPPOSED.

She smiled. "That all depends on YOU, Sugah."

"Hey, Shorty," Dulcy's impudent soprano, as if on cue, cut through the exchange of words. "What's going on in your world?"

Snively slided back to the earth, on his back this time, forcing himself to expose a more trusting side. He glanced sideways at the dragon. "You mean my sick, twisted little world where demons dance and darkness reigns?" he queried, bemused.

It took her only seconds to recover. "Yeah, that one," she affirmed casually.

Bunnie grinned and turned back to face Antoine, and resume her amorous conversation with the high strung coyote.

A few seconds' pang of discomfort curdled in Snively's stomach when he realized his sole advocate among the Freedom Fighters had turned her attention elsewhere, and left him to fend socially for his own. But then it passed, for he had learned in the past few months that Dulcy was just a silly, gentle young creature, that her bark was worse than her bite and her two tons of reptilian bulk . . . for the most part. He shrugged, casting his gaze upward at the spectacular jewel waltz of stars in the sky. God, this place was unbelievable. It was worth a few forced words of congeniality. "Not much, really. Enjoying not being threatened within an inch of my life every time I make a mistake. And you?"

"Well, considering my landing record, and the number of houses and huts and other stuff I've crash landed into, I could say the same!" This she blared, incredulously, in her typical too-boisterous teenage voice, her tail curling closer and getting caught over the toes of his stretched legs, making the overlander whose hearing had long been honed on the sensitive side—for all monitoring purposes in Robotropolis—cringe. "Arg. Ah, um, yes, I see," he managed around the ringing in his ears. "S-small world, isn't it?" He placed one hand on one ear, the other he withdrew, to see if both eardrums were functioning equally, or if Dulcy's latest tirade had finally cost him one of his senses altogether. No deficit was found. He sighed and tried to relax his ever-tensing shoulders, mesmerized for the moment by the intimate, breathing dialogues that welled up all around him: between Sally and Sonic, Tails and Rotor, Geoffrey and Ari, Bunnie and Antoine, Lupe and Sally, and so on. It was like a bowl of vegetable soup, each ingredient enhanced and yet jumbled by the other, but in the end, making a warm and accepting and secure whole. It was exquisite, this communal dialogue of which Bunnie spoke, dreams and jokes and odd quirks exchanged across the breeze. But the calm didn't last long. 

More sincerity, and softness, in the dragon girl's tone now: "Snively?"

A cautious silence, then, "Yes, Dulcy?"

"I'm sorry I called you Shrimpboat." Referring to the day, nearly a year past, when a childishly overconfident Snively had succeeded in a mind control experiment on Sonic, stormed into Knothole, and confronted the dragon head-on in search of Princess Sally. They had, needless to say, met on less than congenial terms, and this was one of many more profane remarks she had tossed his way.

An even longer hiatus, as it processed in Snively's paranoid brain that he was being apologized to, rather than accused, for a misdeed. But it wasn't a misdeed, because . . . "Well, hell, I AM one. I was a bloody FRUITCAKE that day. So it's alright." He shrugged. "After all, what was I thinking wearing that imbecilic hat . . . "

Dulcy snickered at the response, and Snively snorted a relenting chuckle, surprised at his own graciousness, or honesty with self. Perhaps his confidence had been nursed enough back to health that he no longer needed to overcompensate for perceived inferiority. Hell, what was that defense mechanism called? Another painfully short human, it had been based on. . . a Frenchman from Ancient Times, what was his name? Napoleon,' or something? 

"Don't forget your newly invented title . . ." the dragon slyly added around hiccups of giggles, restraining herself from bursting in to raucous laughter.

"Hum? Oh, oh, yeah . . . Snively the Great,' " Robotnik's nephew supplied, face crinkling in disgust. He felt his cheeks blaze red, and added in a lower voice, "The Great ASS, that is . . . "

When Dulcy finally exploded into roaring cackles, it drew Sally and Sonic's attention, and Snively busied himself tracing the invisible paths of the Big Dipper with his pinky, one eye squinted and tongue sticking out with concentration. Finally he cleared his throat: "Yeah, yeah, alright . . . Sorry I called YOU Bimbo."

She wiped tears from her eyes, waving it off instantly. "Nah, no problem." Another bark of laughter. "I AM one."

"Dude, what ARE ya two gabbin' about?" Sonic brayed, while Sally craned her neck to face them and listened with the mental retention of a sponge to a river. 

"NO-thing," Snivel y supplied quickly, certain he could not bear the hedgehog's more relentless, loud-spoken taunts—and certain that the memory of the events Dulcy brought to recollection would easily provoke Sonic to his worst of teasing states. 

But the human's throat closed when the hedgehog spouted a few cackles and retorted, revealing that he'd heard the whole thing, "Aren't ya gonna apologize for calling ME a rodent' all these years?"

Snively's voice slithered into the crisp air like murder creeping in for its kill. "Don't PUSH it, kid."

Sonic only sniggered. 

Another silence. Then a very strange topic of conversation seized Snively—maybe it was the loneliness of the stars that teemed across the cold velvet blackness up in the sky. HE didn't want to stray from the constellation—he wanted to be an integral part. So he spoke again. "Dulcy, what's your biggest fear?"

"Clauster—c-clorsto—"

Gently he supplied, "Claustrophobia?" 

"Yeah, that's it. . . why?"

"Just wondering," he shrugged. Crap. It was coming . . . 

"So what's yours?" came the innocent chirp of the dragon. Yep. He knew it. Confession time again.

He frowned, puzzled by his own impulsive reply. " . . . Being . . . being FUTILE. Does that make any sense?"

"Oh, yes," Sally, on her side next to Sonic, breathed. She curled up tighter into her fetal position. "You have no idea how much."

Snively's heart thundered in his chest—it was almost unthinkable, to have finally grasped at her favor. She was saying that she understood him. He proceeded. "So, then . . . have YOU ever felt futile?"

The princess stirred, turned around and pressed herself against Sonic, as a chill wind blew. Her blue-tinted soul friend slung an arm around her shoulder and pressed his warm tan cheek against hers as she continued. "Yes. When I fail a friend like Cat on missions, and he gets roboticized. When a broken generator always yields a back-up to blow out. When my father meets me for the first time in years and is wrenched away from me again, all because of a matter of timing. All the time, Snively. . . . you?" 

"Yes. I feel futile when I . . . " He swallowed—this was hard, revealing things so deeply entrenched to his former foes. "When I spend my life trying to prove I matter a _great _deal, and end up unable to prove I'm even remotely _competent_. I don't know. Maybe I got obsessed with it . . . maybe it's what kept me in Robotropolis, like I was too afraid to separate what was me from what was the city, and what was my uncle. It was wrong, it was pain and filth--but it was all I _knew_, and I was too scared to discover what else could be known—I was too scared I'd be too insignificant to matter, and that being separated from that darkness and power, I'd just cease to exist. POP!! And there I go, gone with the wind. Insubstantial as an angel's wing. It became so commonplace to my existence that to sever myself from it would be to fragment a part of myself from my whole. It was like I was dependent on it." 

"So you're a bloody masochist," Geoffrey summed up the rare outpouring of feeling into slander. 

He laughed, harshly, slapping his thigh—but this time, none of the others joined him. They were too busy being shocked by Snively's candid words. And S ally—the skunk was fortunate not to be able to see her enraged expression clearly in the moonlight.

Punished once again for his honesty, Snively sat up quickly, and his eyes stung. He shivered, clutching himself, unable, for the first time, to find a good nasty comeback for the skunk. "It's really cold out here," he breathed. 

"_Who's_ cold?" The sound of a heavy body lurched upright, of dust and pebbles scurrying off an immense frame. The voice that accompanied the noise was, by contrast, gentle as down feathers. Rotor. "I've got my jacket to spare." 

Snively growled. _Oh, thanks a _lot_, walrus. Make an even _bigger _nuisance out of me, why don't you? Make _me_ the single snag on the bloody ancestral tapestry_. "You know _very well_ who it is," he snapped aloud, smoothing over his tear-strained voice with anger. "But I _won't_ take your _only _coat, Rotor." 

But it was only seconds before an enormous warm mass, smelling of worn flannel, grass stain and sour-sweet oil, was flung upon him, nearly burying his small frame in its bulk. "You're a hairless human," the same tolerant voice persisted, "who can freeze to death. But I've got blubber. I'll live." A simple, innocent kind of pride filled Rotor's words. "My whole family, we walruses, well . . . we're _survivors._ We live in the Arctic. We hide from our enemies deep underwater that way." 

Snively did not hesitate. "Enemies like _me_, I should imagine. Like my uncle, and me." He attacked the kind walrus with an acid truth. If he were to be offered any kindness from then on, it would have to be given with a full understanding of the creature he had been, and still _could _be. He glanced at Sally, who had withdrawn again, who had coated herself again with her righteous judgment, and resumed her familiar glare back at him. 

A small sigh, and Rotor, wounded, could only retort, "Just put the jacket on, Snively."

The Overlander bristled, shoving his arms into the warm mass, sinking deep into the oversized garment. Eyes glinted like hard blue stones. "Fine," he hissed. _Fine._ _Accept me, then. Accept your downfall. Be a merciful FOOL. _He struggled to grasp at Chuck's words of forgiveness and choice hours earlier; they were fading. Fading. _I can't control how I might thank you later with another dose of cruelty. I _can't_ control it._

Silence.

"My turn!" Sonic crowed, sensing tension. "My turn to ask a question! Name the best day of your life, and why—everyone has to give." He sat up and gave Snively a sharp, discerning wink. "And I mean _everyone_. C'mon, someone start!" 

Snively cringed. Trust that blasted blue nuisance to draw him into a realm of total discomfort. But he had joined them now—joined them in more ways than one, and there was no running, no hiding, to clutch for safety anymore. Even though they might regret it. 

As was her usual breed of leadership finesse, Sally chose to share first. Snively caught snatches of it . . . her sixth birthday . . . freshly orphaned, or so she thought, but her friends had made it a magical day anyway . . . something about Sonic making her ten chili dogs that she would never have eaten, but it was the fact hat he wanted to make her happy that meant so much . . . 

This had prompted Sonic to interrupt, exploding with excitement, to tell that his favorite day had been when Uncle Chuck had opened his chili dog stand, his last good memory before the Coup. Of course, Snively heard every word of this brassy dissertation, for it was Sonic the Mouth, the living microphone, talking, of course. Remembrance of spicy aromas, practical jokes, breathless laughter as Sonic tried to count change at his uncle's cash register, the sweet tinkle of the Mobian coins and the feel of sticky soapsuds as the boy washed his uncle's crockpots clean behind the counter, the comfort of arms that enveloped and became an unconditional home. So that was what a _real _family was like. What a real _uncle _was like.

Dulcy got her greatest joy out of her first flight, hovering just above her mother's protective wings. The day her "ma" had taught her to "crack the whip." Whatever the hell _that_ meant. 

Antoine declared, in that shrill voice of an ill-tuned clarinet, that he had most relished the day his father had bestowed his old blue Mobian Guardsman uniform on his son, in celebration of his initiation into the Squirehood. Again Snively felt the twinge of envy, for a father who adored his son regardless of his blatant flaws. He began to understand why Antoine was such a nervous creature: Certainly the loss of so valuable a person marked a lasting scar on the coyote's young psyche. 

Rotor was wonderfully predictable, methodic and congruent as always with his train of thought: The day he got his first erector set and tool kit, and built the first Freedom Fighter gadget, was unquestionably his favorite. 

Tails, of course, squealed his pleasures as they directly related to Sonic: the day his "big brother" gave him his very own red-and-white sneakers. Now here was a kid who could indulge in _wholesome _idol-worship: who could trust his hero to fulfill the heaven-bound position bestowed upon his blue-quilled shoulders—who, despite a small overdose of brashness, honesty, and egocentricity, had _no concept_ of _betrayal._

It was no wonder how Sonic and Robotnik were mortal enemies. 

Geoffrey's turn came; his snowy lips curled in contempt as he leveled glares with Snively. The human only snorted with amusement when the skunk pointedly grunted, "The first day I shot an Overlander _dead_ was my favorite." Before Sally could intervene, or Snively could voice one of many caustic rebuttals, he elaborated, "Because _they_ _killed_ my pops." He got in Snively's face now, teeth bared, and Bunnie rose on her haunches, silently, tensely, with a ready fist.

All the air puttered from Snively's laughter, until it died a wheeze. The gravity of the situation was at one thrown on him. The shame of not only his uncle, but his race too. His lips thinned. "A gang of _Mobians_ beat my grandmother to a pulp in an alley," he hissed. "And then they did . . _horrible_ things . . to her, as well. But _you _weren't one of them, St. John. . . _were_ you?" 

__

And I'm not the man who killed your father. By God, it was hard to be gracious to that shit-for-brains. To imply that blame only rested with one's own deeds, not those of one's family, or species. For a moment Snively wondered if he was going mad, for his uncle and father, and the entire society of his childhood, had always taught him the opposite of this accepting grace that he was trying to implicate. The acceptance that Mobians were _not _animals. _Not _worthless. _Not _incapable of sophistication . . . forgiveness . . . or _love_. He whetted his lips and awaited the skunk's inevitable slander.

"Well . . ." A voice delicate as threadbare silk, but shuddering with core-deep hate. Too soft for anyone but Snively to hear, as the skunk leaned in to him, nose-to-nose. "I would have done the _same_ if I _were_." Then Geoffrey pulled back into a stormy silence, crouched on the ground slightly outside the circle. But his eyes, strangely, were brimming with something angry, grieving, and wet. Snively saw the ashamed look on the skunk's face, humiliation at his own emotional weaknesses, and somehow mustered the mercy to merely look away, and swallow his final winning insult: _That makes two of us_. Disgust rendered him again shivering cold, for he realized the poison of bigotry had not quite been exorcised from his veins. He dared to look again at the skunk's skewed, grave face, cast downward at the grass. Still pained with memory and revelation. But then again, tears? An _enemy_ who had _tears_? Whether shed or merely on the brink of shedding, they were unsettling. "_Killed_ him," he heard the skunk murmering again, as if to himself, through clenched teeth.

But the silence soon distracted Snively from self-loathing and from Geoffrey. Bunnie was nudging him, expectant. "I just went, Sugah. It's _your_ turn."

"M-my turn for _what_?" Snively stammered. But he already knew the question. He was just trying to stall. For he knew the answer, too.

"Why it's time for tellin' us yo' favorite day _evah_," Bunnie supplied unnecessarily. She smiled, radiant as ever even in the darkness.

His heart froze, his chest a great knot of dread. For a moment he considered bolting for Knothole, forgetting his sacred chance at a role in an actual mission. But he knew he was surrounded. 

Finally he heard the word wheeze out his lips, and both thanked and regretted his ultimate confession of vulnerability. "Today," he said. Again all eyes riveted on his form. _God_, but he felt stupid.

Now even Geoffrey was entranced. "_Why_?" he demanded; his face was strewn with rare, raw bewilderment. 

"Simple, really. Because I wasn't . . . afraid." Snively shrugged, hoping to make light of the deeply revealing response. His eyes squeezed shut; the juvenile wish to vaporize into something invisible seized him.

But it didn't work. "Afraid?" At choice places, Sonic injected his next question with venom. " Of what? Of dear old Uncle Ro-BUTT-nik?" 

The human boy sighed, weary with being associated with—defined by--his uncle, and his uncle alone. He turned his head so that only the glistening green side of Dulcy's massive body greeted him—rather than the intrusive, critical glares of his company. "Yes, him." His voice lowered to a mumble. "Always, always HIM."

Partially recovering from his shock, and electrified by a lust to humiliate the Overlander into regressing to his darker, more contemptible—and more condemnable—side, Geoffrey demanded," All right, then, Hairless. Gimme an example."

Snively scoffed—but the skunk's tactics were successful: He already felt his sense of safety beginning to rot. His heart rate quickened. "What in hell are you gabbing about _now_, St. John?" he lilted, inspecting his fingernails. An admirable attempt at sangfroid.

But Geoffrey persisted. "Well. . . .what's the worst thing he ever did to ya?" Yes, indeed, the skunk had certainly recovered quickly from his own past ghosts. It was, of course, time for him to make someone _else_ suffer with _theirs_. 

Snively's whole body stiffened, his fists clenched until the same nails that were the subject of his feigned idle calm dug through the flesh of his palms. It made a sudden squirming sound in the grass, alerting everyone present knew he'd reacted to the verbal dig in a volatile manner. Sally sat up and eyed Geoffrey again; again, he did not, or rather chose not to, see her. Antoine rubbed his temples and groaned. Rotor and Dulcy exchanged awkward glances, and Bunnie reached a comforting hand for Snively's shoulder, but he lashed away. 

"Have you forgotten the _child_ is present?" the nephew of Julian finally hissed, nodding at Tails, his eyes fastened even more obstinately shut. 

The skunk's tail whipped through the underbrush, snaked across Snively's prominent nose and swished harshly across it. The human jerked his hands across his face and suppressed the urge to sneeze violently as St. John's taunts proceeded. "Don't give me that noble women-and-kiddies-first crap, _bloke_! C'mon and answer my question!"

Horrible, hellish, black-oozing thoughts and memories flooded Snively's brains and soul and spirit until he thought he might gag and vomit some of it up into the grass. He began to tremble. Experiments. . . . beatings, whippings, burnings, scars physical and verbal, abuses mental and . . . 

"I don't want to think about it."

"I thought you were obsessed with it. That you were a sick little Masochist who LOVED it—did you love what HE did to you, Hairless? Do you MISS it?"

"Aw, CAN it, St. STINK!" Sonic brayed, louder than he himself expected he would . . . afraid, somehow, of accepting that one of the good guys could be so cruel—even to a wretch like Robotnik's kin. "Would ya lay _off _him already? He SAID he didn't wanna tell you."

"Yes, Geoffrey." In slid Sally's subtly dangerous monotone. "Please rephrase your question."

The skunk's neckhairs bristled. "You blokes ain't got a grain of humor amongst ya. Alright, then, _Snivvy_," he sneered, "how about this: What's the stupidest thing Old Lard Hocks ever smacked ya around for?"

"Buttoning my shirt collar crooked."

Dulcy guffawed—but then she realized by the human's pasty complexion that he was being serious. "Your WHAT?" she gasped.

"It was the only incongruency in his perfect tidy little regime that morning. . . a couple years back. . . . " Snively gulped back the memory of his uncle's wrinkles of fat curled about his flaming eyes, his huge belly pressed against the boy's chest as he wedged him against a wall and ripped off the wayward shirt buttons, strangling him by one hand and prepared to strike with the other. . . "Could we please just . . . change the subject NOW?" He nearly exploded. He slammed one frustrated fist against the dewy soil. 

"Absolutely," Bunnie affirmed, glowering at the skunk.

Geoffrey shrugged. "Bleedin hearts, all o' ya," he grunted. So much like Packbell, that android from Robotropolis: so callous and spiteful, under so _little_ provocation. 

A creation of _Julian's_, of course.

Snively shuddered and cowered inside Rotor's coat; his neck began to throb with the recollection . . . God, the memory of that cruel bastard was still so vivid. . . it tainted the very filter of his self, of his consciousness. 

Was it to be a _permanent_ stain?

Sonic chose this hiatus in the conversation as his cleanest break to go initiate their mission. "Time?" he requested Sally's permission.

"As good as any," she affirmed. The hedgehog nipped a quick kiss across her cheek and rose, poising to dash off into the darkness. Like a lean blue rubber band ready to spring. 

"Oh, I see," Snively regained a bit of bravado, feeling proudly on the up-and-up regarding the operatives of his newfound companions. "So I suppose this means you'll be . . . oh, dash it all, what is it? . . . Ah, up, over, and . . . away? Out of here?' "

Sonic trumpeted a laugh, clapping his hands raucously together. Tears of mirth gathered in the rims of his eyes. "A-HA..ahahahaaaahoo, boy . . . gone, it's GONE. Away!' Out of here!' Hoohooooo! I LOVE it!" Infuriatingly, he strode over to Snively and gave him a hearty slap across the back, acquiring a nasal British accent. And it was no doubt whose voice he was mocking. "Good man, my dear Snerdly! Quite _capital_ of you!" He'd done it incessant times before.

The company, excepting Geoffrey, burst into genuine, unbridled laughter. Were he not the victim of their mirth, but rather the instigator, Snively might have felt very pleased. As it was, he drew himself up straight with indignation and sniffed. "Well . . . Well .Isn't that the infernal little phrase you always babble when you're off on some crusade--?"

Sonic snorted harder and fell against him cackling. "Quit while you're ahead, buddy!" he managed around fits of laughter. 

" _Buddy_?' " Snively echoed the term as if expelling a spitwad. He tensed against Sonic's affectionate roughhousing.

His surprise at the hedgehog's amiability went unnoticed. "Yeah, you know," Sonic continued over the chortling of his comrades, "accept that you're even MORE square than Antoine (here a shout of protest from the coyote and a string of French curses) and grow beyond it! Now it's juice and jam time. . ."

"I know THAT one, too!" the human retorted eagerly, thanked only by more dismissive laughter. Finally he relinquished the battle. He lashed his arms across his chest. "Whatever," he grumbled, curling back into himself.

"Get a grip of something!" Sally suddenly snapped; Snively ignored her . . . and then Sonic blasted off, exploding in a crash of sound and whirlwinded dust down into the valley that stretched before the eerily gleaming city. 

__

By the Horn of Naugus!! The wind that careened against their bodies tossed the scant Snively several feet to the right, smacking him right against Bunnie's side; he yelped, and grab his head full of rich new hair—so as to not repeat history. He groped away from the rabbit, sitting back down tensely, as the others, still locked firmly in place after heeding the Princess's warning, watched him with continued amusement. He slouched over. " I'm not sure whether to be touched or nauseated . . . " 

"When in doubt, smile!" squeaked a new voice. It was that freak fox child, Tails. To Snively, who moaned and rolled his eyes, there was no one more annoying, save the newly departed hedgehog himself. Tails had a . . . vivaciousness . . . that jaded souls like himself both envied _and _detested. Still, were he to fit in the community once and for all, he would have to learn to put up with kids. So he acknowledged the boy. "Oh? And why's that?"

"I dunno. It just makes sense, I guess." The dusty orange kitsune shuffled his sneakers, mustering the nerve to act on some naïve curiosity. 

Snively sighed. "Well? What is it?" 

"I had a question for you," the child murmured, leaning close. His tails curled together and twisted meekly. "But I didn't want to make you feel bad in front of everybody." 

The declaration immediately rendered the human's gratitude a palette: smoothing over the rough paint globs of peevishness on the canvas of his emotions. Such keen kindness in one so young reminded him of his remoteness from the home of his past ten years. He was open to anything the child had to ask. Shifting weight, and resettling in the dirt that, too, was becoming more familiar, he prodded, "What's troubling you, kid?"

Words were poised on Tails's mouth several times, but he swallowed them. Finally he coughed up the question: "I saw you right before Naugus came back, when you tried to capture me. You werereally sick. You coughed up blood—and it was all because of HIM, wasn't it?" His young voice quivered; he was silent for an instant to resteady it. Trying so hard to be sophisticated at ten brief, precious years. Snively could hardly remember being so unspoiled, so green and fresh and new. Perhaps he'd come out of the womb jaded, smothered by Julian's shadow. He too fought back an urge to collapse, mutely, as the boy regained his courage and again spoke. "Why did you stay with Robotnik when he was soso MEAN to you? You couldayou coulda come to US. " The soft little voice spiked to an agitated volume with Tails's incredulity—pain was not necessary, pain was _bad_, so why live in constant proximity to it? 

Simple logic. Simpleand true. But too true for reality itself. Too pure for it—for _him_. 

Despite the kitsune's attempt to make their exchange nondescript, his apparent distress drew the attention of several other Freedom Fighters, who remained silent and still. Snively was aware of their focus upon him, so he pitched his voice low. Pointlessly, he knew. But he was really getting sick of being examined like a dead, dissected fly, dirty fragile wings and all. Hadn't they rendered their verdict already, anyway? 

__

Hadn't they?

He drew a deep breath. "That's hard to explain, Tails. But I.I'll try. Do you remember when you were a little boy, right after the coup, and everyone had left you for dead, and only Sonic could make things feel safe? Could make you feel—special? _Wanted_?"

"Yeah."

"Before the coup, Robotnik went by Julian to me—my _Uncle_ Julian. He was my dad's brother."

The child's chest swelled with pride. "I know! Aunt Sally taught me all about it! I know ALL about it!" Pride at knowing so much of an event so hideously sad—an event with bloodstains on HIS hands. 

It made Snively squirm. Yet he continued. "Well, my dadhe and I didn't really get along too well. We were always sad, or angry, or hurting, at each other. I got to feel pretty abandoned. Julian made me feel the way Sonic makes you feel for many, _many_ years—until I was almost all grown up—before he turned intono, before he revealed that he always HAD been. Robotnik. He made me think that I _mattered_."

Now Tails frowned, genuinely confused. "But you DO matter. Just like I do."

Snively's eyes squeezed shut as he forced away the furious guilt that bore through him. To even be _conceived_ as worthy of love as this boy, whom he'd seconds ago wished to swat away like a gnat._absurd_, it was. He forced himself to finish. "That was the kind of. . . trap. . . that my uncle set for me. It was a trap because he meant harm to me rather than good, and when I found out the only person who had accepted me really was _using_ me, I was afraid to trust anyone else's claims that I _could change_ things. And. . . I got so used to it that I was afraid to live any other way—do you understand?" Looking at his hands in the darkness all the while—were they vanishing into black finally, without return, or was it just a trick of the moonlight? 

The boy truly considered his question, frowning with fierce comtemplation. " . . . No." 

Snively nodded, slowly. "Goodgood. I hope you _never _do, Tails."

Geoffrey, momentarily appeased, rose from the circle and plucked another blade of grass and gnawed on it. He chose to solicit his very capable listening skills. Bitterness weighted his words as he cast his deep marine hued eyes over the cityscape. "The day will come, mate. It comes for everybody. No use wishing it won't."

As the skunk strolled farther from hearing distance, Snively chuckled, flatly, angrily. "You sound _just _like my father," he muttered, picking a dandelion and ripping its petals from their seams. "Might as well lose your innocence NOW, go to your uncle and sin and shame our esteemed house NOW, because a brat like you will never amount to . . . to . . ." He gritted his teeth and was silent. Every tear of soft yellow life from its core gave him a peculiar, perverse, vengeful joy, and he realized he was far from cured of his family's dark shadow. ". . . to anything, anyway."

The young kitsune did not understand any of these words. But, vaguely sensing trouble, he sidled up between the human and the gently dozing Dulcy, brandishing a stick that sported a lovely aroma. He peered into Snively's disturbed face with the unhampered perception that only a child can possess. "Are you alright?"

Snively smiled at him, but was honest. "No, I'm not." He tried to hide the humiliated sob that nearly cut off the air in his throat.

The fox planted one hand on his hip, struggling for a solution. Finally he snapped his fingers. "Want my hot dog?" He shook the good-smelling warm mass over Snively's head, so unabashedly enthused that the Overlander couldn't help but feel tickled. Grin broadening, he was ready to accept, when the sound of a roaring jet and yet a whisper in the grass seized everyone's attention—

Sonic was back. And he looked grave. "I've got bad news."

Snively's heart stopped. "Sprocket. . . ?" 

"He's fine." The hedgehog, typically so indomitable, had a disturbing aura of fatigue about his sharp dark eyes. He glared at his feet, shuffling the dirt beneath his sneakers. "He and Uncle Chuck are . . . just _fine_. . . _considering_ . . ." 

"Considering _what_?" Robotnik's nephew demanded; for the first time that night, his voice elevated to a roaring volume. He set his jaw.

Sally stood, and the others followed her lead, shooting to their feet like rockets. "Well," the princess spoke, strong and steady, taking Bunnie's clammy organic hand. "We're ready, Sonic. Tell us."

"It's the old hidden deroboticizer chip. It's not going to work." Now he was kicking at the dirt, hard, fury wrinkling his muzzle. "No better than the one we used before."

No. _Nononono._ . . . 

"Why is that?" There was not a trace of emotion in Sally's voice. She was the problem, making no conclusions yet. But Bunnie was already buckling at the knees, even under the princess's grasp. 

"_No_! That's not _possible_!" Snively cut in, exploding, seeing his sole advocate's grief, angry and terrified all at once. Frenzied, seeing Sprocket's anguished eyes flooding forgiving gold in his head. "That can't _be_! I _know _that can't be! I _saw _Robotnik make _both_ models!" He shook his fists at his sides. "I . . . He _had_ to . . ._I_ helped him _do_ it . . . " But he was beginning to remember. _Two_ old prototypes, before the new model had been made. And _he_ had been the one to suggest that an alternate prototype be made to secure the safety of his uncle . . .and himself. He had helped Julian make that alternate. _That_ had been the datachip so strongly fixed in his memory. "The other one . . . it's got to be in Central Command _somewhere_. . ."

Sonic continued as if he hadn't heard him. Or didn't _believe_ him. "The problem with the chip we've been looking for . . . the prototype . . . it was gonna work . . . but even with the replacement parts, the only version of the data chip that Uncle Chuck can find . . . is compatible with reversing the process on . . . on _humans only_." He looked at Snively. "He made it for himself and . . ." His voice trailed. He need not finish the sentence. 

"_Humans_!" It was both ironic laughter and a cry of rage that pealed from Geoffrey's throat. "_Humans_! Bloody _Gods!" _He tore across the landscape frothing, took Snively by the shirt collar and shoved him against a nearby tree. Nobody stopped him. "_You_! I _remember_: you told me I'd made a fatal enemy' out of you! You ain't futile, you're GOOD at hurting people! THAT be the difference YOU make! Well, antagonist?! TRAITOR?! How does it _feel_, ya little _bastard of tyrants? Eh_? How does the blood feel on your hands _now_?" He spat in the human's face; Dulcy finally intervened, bodily lifting the skunk away from his assault. She landed him in her torso pouch and clutched him gently but firmly.

"We know Geoffrey, we _know_," the dragon was saying, uncharacteristically somber--_morbid_. "Just _stop_, now, okay?" The skunk was still struggling, grappling, hands hungrily clawing for his foe. But he could not get at Robotnik's nephew this time.

Snively neither heard the volcanic words nor felt the vile liquid trickling down his cheek. His face had gone a shade of bluish-gray, his back still wedged rigidly against the tree trunk. His eyes were upcast and vacant, hands slowly clasped across his chest in an X-form, as in the ascetic pose of an ancient saint pleading for mercy.

__

It's then that you'll know your part in tonight's mission. Chuck's words of levity only hours past were now an anchor dragging the human headfirst under murky, blackened waters. _Antagonist. Traitor. That was all he had ever been, and all he was now. It was his permanent part, his born role, not only tonight, but for every dawn until he finally rotted away. This was all his fault. HIS._

He dared to look up, and as he'd expected, all eyes of his company bored into his very being. They were a mixed bag of resentment, mistrust, weariness, and hostility. And, in Bunnie's rare case, piercing grief. Hope? Nowhere to be found. 

The rabbit finally crumpled to the earth, a steel blossom strangled by an early frost. Her sobs ripped through the crisp night like a funeral dirge. Sally stooped to comfort her. Stupidly, too desperate to think, too hungry for the approval he'd just been taunted with knowing, Snively opened his clumsy mouth and tried to dodge the blows of past crimes. "God, I didn't know. You've _got _to believe me. All those years, locked up in that city, I didn't _know _. . ."

Sally guffawed; it was an angry, lost noise raging up from the bowels of her soul. And the words that followed it were less than kind. "You DID know. You just didn't CARE. That's the whole _problem_." But they were _true_ words. She fixed a withering glare on him, tossed her auburn hair from her eyes to intensify it, gathering all her pity coldly to her and basking Bunnie in it instead, squeezing the girl's shoulders harder. 

"Sally, stop," the rabbit managed around heaving sobs. "Stop, he can't _do_ nothin' about it _now_—" 

Snively clasped hands about his ears, not wishing to hear any more of her bottomless compassion. Yes, there was something he could do _now_. It had all been self-pity and sorrow . . . until _now_. _Now _he cared only for the sorrow of _another_. He had finally lost his selfishness to oblivion, and so there _was one_ _thing_ he _could _do. The human tore off Rotor's coat, yet another unsolicited, useless kindness, and thrust it at the ground. He turned feebly from his savior and her companions, downcast and slouched like a beaten mongrel, and simply ran away, to the bluff of the hill. He slammed, hard as he could, smashing all of the rage and fear and anguish in his gut, against a great boulder, the only thing that obstructed him from tumbling over into the valley that harbored the ugly city. It robbed him of all his wind, and a noise alien, like a gag and a choke and a whimper, dribbled out his mouth and into the night air—too soft to be heard. His eyes were too dry, too weary, even for tears. No one had followed him, so he sank slowly to the ground, fingers clutching at the rocky shield, and curled up as tightly into himself as he could. No one bothered to find him . . so perhaps _this t_ime he could _vanish._

The last words he heard, before he fell into the feverish, dreamless slumber of one lost, were Sally's: "Break camp for Knothole in the morning, guys . . . Tonight we . . . we call it _quits_."

__

Quit. Stop. Give up.

A most unwelcome voice roused Snively from sleep. It was still pitch dark when Dulcy blared in his ear, "You alright, Shrimpboat? It's been an hour and you're still all shriveled up over here." There was marked compassion in her voice as her charcoal-scented breath beat down on his head. So someone still cared.

Damn.

Snively curled deeper into himself, groaning from an exquisite headache. "Just go away, would you?" he whispered. He looked at his hands— Still visible. Still alive.

Damn.

"I'd rather not," came the dragon's boisterous reply. "You look like someone who needs company. And _I've_ got insomnia. I mean, _sheesh_, there are no proper tree branches to _hang_ from around here, so . . ."

Snively felt the sudden compulsion to confide in the open-hearted, amiable, nonjudgmental fourteen-year-old. "Dulcy, what am I going to _do_?" He sat up, clutching his skull. 

She flew into a gale of quiet snickers, a remarkably rejuvenating sound, and suddenly he was glad for her ridiculous capacity for cheer. "About my insomnia? Gee, it sure is nice of you to care, but I always thought a glass of warm milk—"

He was unfazed by her prattle. "I have _nowhere_ to go from here. Nowhere to go where I won't face the same hateful glares of the people I've hurt. Nd if I meet new people . . . I'll just disappoint _them_, too. Geoffrey was _right_." 

"Yeah," she retorted, matter-of-factly, but not very helpfully. "You're in some deep crudsky here, Shorty." 

"So what do I _do_?"

"Well . . . _something_," she blurted, shrugging mightily. He turned to look at her in puzzlement, and irritation; even _Dulcy_ was not usually _this_ vague. She sighed. "I _mean, _as long as you don't just _lie there_ feeling sorry for yourself and _forgetting _the people you care about. _Act_ on it."

He nodded. Slowly, as it sank it, excruciating, but somehow liberating. "So. . . this is what it feels like." 

"What?" She was growing impatient. 

"To be . . . _sorry_."

In all his smallness, drowned in all his mistakes and regrets and sins, he knew there was one thing he _could _still control. "I have to do something," he said, hoisting to his feet. "Yeah. I'm going to _do_ something." _I must be going mad._

Dulcy blinked at him, watching him with head slightly cocked as he clambered down the rocky promontory and vanished into the shadows of he foothills "Okay," she grunted, returning to her spot by the other slumbering Freedom Fighters. 

Another hour or so passed before it occurred to her that she should probably tell Sally that he had left.

"Prowling in the night

Hiding neath my fright

Manipulate my sight—thief

Whenever you steal

My punishment's real

You gave me sorrow

Invading my own value

Parading my shy security

While gripping my innocence—thief

Whenever you steal

My punishment's real

You gave me sorrow"

--Delerium

For the past twenty minutes, the company of rancid smells and perilous piles of scrap debris had brought the short, gaunt Snively yet more self-revelation. He realized tonight he was the young, vulnerable, sheepskin-clad David, charging straight for the metallic Goliath. Yet there was a darker tint to that comparison here. Strange . . . he never knew he had so much of his father in him: so much of a guerrilla soldier's instinct to crawl along the enemy frontlines, a sneering praying mantis moving in for the kill—joyous of its conquest. He'd always thought himself the weakling that fainted or fled before the sight of danger, who simpered with guilt and fear at the sight of his own actions. But the raging pace of his pulse, the thirsty dilation of his pupils, the smile curling his dry lips, all proved him more a Kintobor than he'd fancied. Or _desired_. Yet, perhaps his character flaws, his desire for vengeance, might serve him, tonight, to do some good—to seek out the Holy Grail of Mobian freedom: the correct deroboticizer data chip.

Snively flexed his fingers, rhythmically, almost involuntarily, as he rounded the last garbage pile and entered the true Robotropolis vicinity. For a moment his breaths grew shallow and the battle thirst gave way to lightheadedness, but he leaned against a mass of discarded radiators, steadied himself, and resolved to go forward. He slung a shirtsleeve over his forehead and rid it of cascades of sweat, scheming his next move. Central Command was indeed in the middle sector of the city, having never been uprooted from its original position as the King's Palace. But having crept in the back way from the Great Forest, through the protruding junk piles, Snively had gotten at least 3/4 of the way there already. He had only a quarter mile stretch to cover before he'd reached his destination—or, he mused, with a gulp, his _doom_. 

A dearth of Spy Eyes in this back sector (despite years of Snively's observation and nagging, Robotnik had _never _wizened to the fact that the Freedom Fighters attacked the power generators most frequently from _behind_ the city) would make the journey simpler. However, that lack of intelligence operatives was compensated with twice as many SWATbot patrols. A line of about 30 of these towering sentries now marched about the back alleys of Central Command in a freakishly orderly line of two's. Snively's stomach gurgled and twisted with terror. Laser pistols, installed in every finger, of both hands, in every one of those robots. Capable of incising a crisp, neat hole right through his skull—he imagined the spray of blood dirtying their polished hides as they made the indifferent kill.

Ah, but there was a catch, to which only Snively and his uncle were privy: Robotnik had programmed the SWATs to act out a rhythmic routine function under each mode of operation. When they were in patrol mode, unless interrupted, they only moved a certain number of steps—five—before they stood immobile—and oblivious—categorizing the data of the environment and scanning it for violations. In essence, for five-second intervals, they had to process what they had just seen the past five steps before they were capable of deciding whether they should act on the offensive. It was relatively crude technology, and most likely how the Freedom Fighters had consistently been able to outsmart his uncle's security force. And furthermore, when the SWATs were moving and active, only _motion_ alerted them to an antagonistic disturbance; specialties like heat sensors were only activated by a specific voice order. It was at once clear to Snively how, with a great deal of patience and care, he might get through to Central Command. 

He drew a deep breath and awaited the first SWATbot's sedentary mode. 

Then, from the safety of the garbage pile, he lunged . . . Finding himself ground to a halt after his first five seconds, between two SWATs as they marched their dutiful allotted steps, and again paused. 

He'd gotten past six of them when Fate regained its cruelty. A chunk of molten iron sprawled in his way. In the gloom he could not spot it, and so when he reached his freezing point, instead of halting, he flopped to the ground with a yelp. 

Just as a SWAT resumed its motion mode. 

Snively found himself staring down the end of a laser-clad finger, ears filled with the drone of "Surrender, intruder, resistance is futile." All 30 bots crowded around him, pistols leveled at his head. 

He was going to scream, to beg, for a swift death, to be spared his uncle's wrath . . . when he realized he'd assumed something that could very well be false. Uncle had always been slack, lazy, cocky as the ruler, as the tyrant, and so had Snively . . . so why not Naugus, too? Power had a way of doing that to immoral men. And it took one to know one. He hoped. Drawing all his courage to him, Snively rose indignantly upright and filled his throat with wrath, at once becoming the formidable second-in-command he had been for a decade. "SWAT patrol, sector 7 quadrant 4! Override security operative, by _ORDER _of Chief Commander Snively Kintobor. _NOW_." 

An instant of silence followed, an eternity, in which the world, for Snively, froze. 

  
A whirring, a clicking of internal gears . . . the SWAT that had first pounced upon him straightened and Snively forced himself not to cringe. Then all of the robots, in unison, saluted him, and dropped their offending hands. "As you command." They ceased moving utterly: worthless, useless metallic statues.

Snively breathed again, and thanked God for the laziness, and unmodified security codes, of Ixis Naugus. He wasted no time in fleeing for the back entry to Central Command, however sparing himself a snicker—he was sure his uncle had suggested changing the security codes to the wizard—more than once. Like _he_ would have. How droll to imagine old Julian groveling in _his_ boots now.

He spotted an equally immobile techbot reposing near the back door—this was the sector where repairs were made. Thankfully this one had gone unattended thus far. Uncle Chuck had charaded his spy work inside the shell of a techbot for months, so Snively didn't see why he couldn't perform successfully too. It could get him inside the building, at least. He climbed inside the hollow yellow costume and scooted for the door. 

Once inside he made a quick pace down the winding shadows and corridors, mind racing. He was so caught up in the possibilities of his next plan of action that he didn't see Naugus himself striding into the hallway out of the hoverbot hangar room until it was too late. 

They collided with a resounding thud, and Naugus, the far greater mass, only let out an angry grunt, while Snively went careening against the nearby wall, spinning in a mad circle. 

"Stupid robots!" the wizard roared. "One more dunderheaded act like that and so help me, I'll dismember the whole _lot_ of them!" He smacked the broad side of his tail against the hood of Snively's techbot shell; the clang, inside, was deafening. But Snively was far more worried of discovery than pained ears. 

"We intended to repair all of the techbot models, Master," came an unnervingly smooth, seductive voice, barely hampered by the tinny sound of a mechanical audio system. Snively shuddered; it was Commander Packbell, that damned sadist, apparently accompanying Naugus on his evening stroll through the building: having lost none of his arrogant, malicious countenance from the shift in the city's power, as Robotnik had. The deceptively beautiful, sleek android tossed his unkempt raven hair and swaggered up to Snively's outer shell with eyes ablaze. A strong hand rested on its side and patted it. Again the clangor in Snively's ears. " I promise you that _this _one will be dealt with _most_ severely. But in the meantime, perhaps we might employ it to repair your hovercraft?" Ever that lilt of impeccable, pacifying diplomacy. Damn him, Snively hoped _he _would _never _defect like the other commanders. But at least Robotnik's "son" was unwittingly giving the human an escape. 

"Yesss, how wise," the wizard hissed, stroking that tangled, matted white beard. But he was looking at Snively closely. Too closely. The human could swear he himself was being scrutinized by those hard twin glinting beads, rather than his offending disguise. But the moment passed, and Naugus gave a shrug of dismissal. "Excellent, commander, do as you have suggested." 

Packbell barked at the techbot shell to use its energies on hovercraft #1. As the doors hissed shut behind him, and he was again alone, Snively breathed a sigh of relief and leapt out of the techbot. His mind at last was fully employed on the location of the deroboticizer prototype datachip. Only the remaining vertigo of the previous few moments hampered his mental efforts.

The correct prototype had _not_ been found in the mainframe computer. _Where_, then . . . ?

His uncle's only sin was Mobius's only salvation. Snively remembered Robotnik's hideously afraid face the day they'd replaced the old roboticizer prototype and buiolt he new roboticizer with no permanent reversal. Remebered his fingers clutching his nephew's shoulders like fat bursting leeches. Remembered even better his words . . . 

__

"My only sin, my only mistake . . . our_ only mistake . . . we must hide it in the privacy of our deepest selves, Snively . . we must make it our intimate transgression that none of our foes will ever discover . . ." _Intimate shame. _Hidden_ shame. 

Of _course._ The human prototype had _not_ been a sin to Robotnik; it was his means of self-preservation should the Mobians attempt to roboticize him. He saw nothing wrong with this selfish, greedy tool, easily blazoned on the mainframe computer. But the prototype which could end the suffering of _others_ . . . _that_ was something to be hidden, forgotten—or perhaps clung to all the _greater_. _Obsessed_ over. _That_ was something to be found . . . in Robotnik's _bedroom_. How to _get _there?

__

Air ducts, air ducts—Snively remembered his own suggestion for coerce operations in the city. Just as a workerbot repairman line entered the room, Snively hoisted himself, barely unseen, on top of a hoverbot unit and crawled inside the narrow passageways. The power of navigation whirred in his brain and he maneuvered as best he could towards the northwest sector of the building. Peering through the vents in the pipes allowed him some leverage, gave him vague notion of his whereabouts. Finally, through a gilded vent, he saw it: that monstrous silk-sheeted round mass, his uncle's bed. Snively had reached his destination. He had almost forgotten the anxious moisture caking his cheeks and forehead, making his shirt cling to his torso, as he slid down the pipe shaft and plopped into the bed. 

It was incredible—so important was it to his uncle to hide his private world, so great was his paranoia, that he had rendered the room free of surveillance of any sort: cameras, guards, anything. It was apparent from the new décor, the dusty old books, numerous crystalline wizard staffs and potions, that Naugus had claimed the room for himself—still, Snively was free, for the moment, to do his work. Eyes scanned the room like icy lasers, calculating and summing—perhaps the closet? No, too obvious. Under the bed? Too easy. It had to be the computer, again. The computer, armed with some impossible password. Snively's heart sank even as he darted to the monitor and attacked the keyboard, accessing the device's secret files. He raked his mind for some sort of logical word.

__

Power? Access denied. _Technology? _Access denied. _Packbell? _Nope.****Hedgehog? Access denied. He even typed in his own name, just, at that desperate point, for a laugh, when suddenly it came to him. Because Snively _understood_. In this secret world of haunting regrets, of sins hidden, what was the one thing that his uncle would not and could not truly face? 

His own name. _Himself_. Snively knew because he had felt the same, only in these past few months he had acted against it, renovated the attic of his regret, poured sunlight and fresh air into the wound, rather than hidden it away and let it sour into true, hating, rancid, blackened evil. But his uncle would rather rot away in his illusion of perfection and glory than face the _inadequacy_ that was _himself_. He hid that demon, formidably renamed himself during the coup, and wished what he loathed—_himself_--to oblivion. Snively knew—because he had almost done the _same thing_.

The password was JULIAN. "Bingo." Snively typed it and slammed his index finger triumphantly upon the return key.

__

Access granted. 

Flashes of redemption and renewal—diagrams, texts, file numbers and repair codes, all at his fingertips. He grabbed a tiny datachip from an iron case by the _very_ fallible Robotnik's bed and downloaded the old deroboticizer prototype information. And then, when he was finished, he slipped the chip into his boot, and crawled back into the air ducts. A few moment's time found him emerging though a low-level pipe, at the front entrance of the building, facing the dark city that would never again be his home.

Suddenly Snively realized he had no way out from the front façade of Central Command. He was trapped in Robotropolis, his personal hell, again.

Then he remembered something. The pod depositing network of the Doomsday Project, for all of the wreckage Sonic, Sally, and the Time Stones had caused, was still intact—underneath the city. An intricate system of cast iron pipes and sewage seals, it could be navigated by someone who had studied it meticulously for months. Like _himself_. He'd memorized the pod system of Doomsday from working on its design firsthand for over a year, when it had been in gestation, his uncle's latest brainchild. What irony to find salvation in a tool meant exclusively for destruction. But Snively, purebred coward that he still was, wasn't inclined to be picky when he found a clear way to save his skin.

He grappled for a sizeable chunk of scrap metal, and awaited the moment when the inevitable cluster of each hour's three spy eyes would be discharged from their hangar, in the east end of the Central Command building. The moment came, and they floated eerily from their posts, a sliver of silver caught by the barely visible moonlight. Snively gathered his nerve, wrenched to his feet, and tossed the metal piece into a nearby alley. The spy eyes scrambled like vultures in its direction. Robotnik's nephew suppressed a nasty cackle. He darted for another, larger opening—unguarded since Naugus came to power, the entry to the Doomsday pipes just below the spy eye hangar. Still, crawling inside, he could not rid himself of his spiteful glee. Imbecilic things, while his own creation, they were the crudest part of uncle's regime, and yet the old fool had never updated their design. What a delight that not following his nephew's cautionary advice now returned to haunt the brute.

He was so smug that he didn't even realize he was being followed. . . 

Closely.

They trod in steely silence, the three who knew the city almost as well as its despot, Geoffrey morbidly smug, Sonic perturbed, Sally simply enraged. It seemed that ever since Dulcy roused them to blurt her confused testimony of Snively' abandonment, the same expressions had been chiseled into their faces and voices and souls. They had split up to scour the streets a dozen times, had come back together and finally resolved to check the front of the looming monster that was Central Command. Anything, Sally mused grimly, to stop the buzzing in her head, to stop from hearing Geoffrey's relentless drone of "I told you so, I knew it, I _told_ you so . . ." She fingered Nicole, the nephew of Robotnik's first Good Samaritan act towards her, and pondered the elusive truth that was yet to be found this night; she sighed, trudged a few steps ahead of the two brooding men, wondering, thinking, trying to see the rational explanation. Trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason behind the betrayal—the justification of it all. 

And then she saw him. Snively—clambering into a yawning hole, a filthy, gaping black sewer pipe at the foot of Central Command. Looking cocksure. And behind him, only a few perilous yards behind him . . . 

Ixis Naugus.

"There!" she hissed, jabbing a finger at the scene. "There he is—"

"Conspiring with the sorcerer, of course," Geoffrey snarled, a hand brushing his crossbow. "Got a clear shot at them _both _from here, Luv."

Sonic seized the weapon and shoved it at the ground. His impudent tenor broke the skunk's swaggering claim. "If we could kill Naugus _that_ easily, King Max'd have been restored last Tuesday, _moron_!" He rolled his eyes.

St. John's gaze flickered with requited, but unspoken, disgust. "Fine," he growled, "then what d'ya suppose we do _instead_?"

"Follow them," Sally breathed, touching both of their shoulders for accord. "Don't _judge_ the situation yet . . . just _follow_ them."

Naugus, it seemed, was so intent on following Snively, as if they were indeed conspirators, that he didn't see or sense the added company of the three Freedom Fighters. Or so it seemed. They gave the wizard prudent time to vanish inside the pipework. Then they crossed the barren earth, flying soundlessly across it like hawks diving for the kill, and, Sonic first, crept inside as well.

Snively knew he was being followed the moment his feet—and then his scrawny legs--were submerged in the sewage that had flooded the Doomsday pipeworks. For he had taken five steps and stopped, but the lag of the thick water rendered the individual behind him quite noisy even when mimicking his stillness. God, it ws bigger than him a lot bigger, by the titanic swoosh of the water. And it _knew _he knew it was present—and gaining. God, he could not see, he could not _see _. . . vile stench, inky sloshing oil spills like the great pupil of a monster, gleaming back at him from below, and the bottomless darkness before and behind him. Thoughts of his direction or whereabouts fled from him. . . A choking sensation closed his throat; the taste of bile came to his mouth, and he was so seized by fear that he had to gag back a violent retch. He considered running . . . no, it would alert his accoster; he had to round a corner, and _then _to make haste for all his worth. 

The opportunity came—a sharp bend to the left, and beyond it, a faint but fresh burst of air, a clean circulation—an opening! All he had to do was get there. . . 

Snively inhaled mightily, winced at the odor, and braced himself. And then he broke for it. Great mountains of water splashed up in every direction of him as he ran, roaring; he shrieked, for he realized that it was the sound of a man's voice, not the sound of his steps, and that the water had taken ona shape. A face—grotesque, unmistakable—Naugus's face. It leered at him and splashed into his chest and eyes, sending him flying backwards. Two scaly hands caught him and shoved him back on his feet. He turned, teeth gnashed, and beheld the sorcerer standing behind him, claw poised above his head to deliver the blow. Snively's knees buckled. 

"Please please don't hurt me!" he screeched, suddenly fully his whining, yellow-blooded self again, arms flailing flimsily. A despicable passing thought of lying came to fruition on his lips: "The Freedom Fighters-_they_ put me up to it! I had no _choice_! H-hurt th--" He swallowed it back, the demand "hurt_ them_," but for all his heroics that hour, he _wanted_ to say it more than anything now. 

But Naugus was far from the point of listening. "_Fool_!" he thundered. "Did you _really_ think you could do it _yourself_? Have you learned _nothing_?"

Snively, for all his terror, blinked at the sorcerer in mute confusion. These were strange words to accord with the wrath of a hoodwinked tyrant. A rustling behind them, a stirring of the waters, but Naugus, who suddenly sneered, did not even turn around. It was almost as if he knew someone else was behind them.

And then, like clockwork: "Going somewhere, _Noggin_?" Out of the murky shadows Sonic flashed, blazing ahead of the sorcerer and sending a kick into his kneecaps. The sheer momentum of the blow sent the wizard crashing forward into the water, screaming with apparently unbearable pain. He did not get up, but instead, eyes shiftily sidecast, gripped his knees. Sally and Geoffrey followed, surrounding Snively, looking far from pleased to see him.

The human was too astounded to do anything but gape. 

"Alright, bloke. _Talk_. TELL us how you've betrayed us again!" Geoffrey could not care less that they had, seemingly without struggle, felled the wizard who reduced Dr. Robotnik to a broken reed shivering in the wind. Lighting a cigarette, so nonchalant, the warm glow basking them all in soft, drowsy light. False beauty as he lit it, dragged, hissed it out through flashing fangs. Already having rendered his verdict. No, the skunk took _no_ notice of the peculiar ease with which victory over Naugus was won—rather, he finally had his chance to spill all his rage and judgment on Snively. And he sucked Sally and Sonic right in with him. The hedgehog only glowered in silence, hands lashed over chest and head slowly shaking, while the princess rose an eyebrow awaiting Snively's reply.

"I . . ." the human found his voice. His eyes at last were torn from Naugus's fallen form. "I just wanted to . . ." how pathetic he sounded " . . . to _help_." Oh God. They would never believe him now. Naugus had been . . . Naugus . . . "_Have you learned nothing?" _As if he were his apprentice . . . his _accomplice_. Sonic scoffed to confirm the supposition, the illusion, which the sorcerer had already helped create. "No, please, you must _believe _me."

"Oh?" the princess demanded, flatly, "That's the _second _time you've _begged_ for that tonight. But if you would just behave as you were asked in the _first_ place, you wouldn't _need _the benefit of the doubt, would you? Why vanish without telling us, into the city? Why _deceive _us, Snively?"

__

Because I didn't want you involved in MY mistakes. In case someone died on this mission. . . it should be ME. How to admit that? How to admit that I can FEEL? So vulnerable if I . . . "Listen, that doesn't . . . I just . . . I wish no more discord between us." A new desperation clung to Snively's voice, one that commanded their attention. He almost felt himself regaining control. "I implore that you allow me to prove to you my fealty to the House of Acorn. I hope to have done that tonight, even after . . . what was learned." 

"Ha!" Geoffrey's angry, mirthless, laughter resounded in the sewers, deep within his throat. Even Sonic, who slouched sullenly at the sewer exit, a rebellious scowl on his face, could not avoid cringing at the sound. "An easy task," the skunk sneered, "for a craven lad whose new slavedriver is nothin' but an asthmatic, rheumatic old CRIPPLE! C'mon, now, just _admit_ it! _That's _who you're here to see, _ain't _it?" 

Naugus stirred, making the clusters of algae and muck clinging to his silken cloak roil in the murky tarn. His eyes burned, and a peculiar hissing noise wheezed out his nostrils and parted the blackened waters into ripples. He leaned forward on his knees, slowly and subtly, as Snively wrenched his fingers into fists. "But I may pledge it NOW," the human pressed, "of my OWN free will—I am not at gunpoint, I have no gain—all I ask is that I may pledge my loyalty in this deed."

"Then why didn't you ask me up front?" Sally demanded. "Why did you have to sneak away in darkness to prove yourself to me?"

His eyes bore into hers. "Would you have believed me then, either?" 

Silence trailed his words, as Sally, in her mind, realized the answer—a resounding "No." Suddenly, disconcertingly, what the nephew of her father's traitor was saying made a great deal of sense. Much more so, at least, than the paranoid slander Geoffrey was spewing quicker than spitwads of tobacco. 

"Yes, I thought so," Snively groaned, frustration becoming momentary fury. "So you think this is an act? A melodramatic . . . folly? You are QUITE mistaken! This afternoon you accused me of not caring, that all your longsuffering was spawned by this indifference of mine. I—not CARE?" He guffawed. "I wish to GOD I were so FORTUNATE! No, Princess, I cared—I was just too damned _chickenshit_ to admit it! But I SURRENDER—alright? I ADMIT it now—I was ripped to SHREDS from the inside out by this past decade. I made demons out of the everyday that will haunt me to my grave and beyond. My silence—it martyred more Mobians than Packbell's pistol or my uncle's fist ever, in bloody action, did." He shrugged at the squirrel, relinquishing himself to her judgment. "So I condoned evil. I admit it, I DID. But I cared. Loneliness became anger, anger vengeance, vengeance bitterness. Now? EMPTINESS. I'm a shell. I've no inner substance, no purpose. So why not trust me? Why not fill me back up with a purpose? Why not give me my SOUL back?" He bit his lip, terrified that he'd said _far _too much.

But Sally was, in that split second, convinced. "Do you swear it?" she breathed, so eager to make at least one enemy of her nightmares a friend. "You must be looking for the deroboticizer chip. Yes." He tried to interrupt, to explain he'd succeeded, but she was talking too fast. So eager. "Alright, if you swear, we'll stay here and be your backup. You can take an intercom out of Sonic's backpack and we can talk using Nicole's scramble channel." She was already making plans as if she needed no pledge. 

"And we'll take care of old halitosis-breath here while you make your search," Sonic concurred, if only to vex Geoffrey. He threw Snively a thumbs-up. "You're okay, Snide-ly. Be cool, you're . . . you're okay." His blue brow wrinkled at his own statement, but he withheld the urge to take it back.

The skunk's jaw dropped. For an instant, the crossbow he'd just drawn from his belt nearly slipped through his fingers and splashed to the water. "Wh-wha? But how can you just . . . " He could not find the words, and so for once he dropped the matter.

Still closer Naugus crept to his feet. 

Snively stepped back, unwittingly closer to the old wizard. He found a bit of his old buoyancy, and forced a smile. "I think you three will be quite pleased." He reached for the deroboticizer chip in his boot underwater. "I do swear that I—"

And then it happened—the world turned back against him. 

Like a serpent's tongue, the tail of Naugus lashed out of the murk and smacked the crossbow from Geoffrey's unwary hand. It was in his own greedy crab claw in seconds, the arrow tip pressed against Snively's temple. Snively was hardly at all startled, almost as if he had expected such treachery. He sighed sickly. But the others uttered a collective gasp, save Geoffrey, who clawed on the end of his fuming cigarette with satisfaction. "That's more like it" could almost be HEARD in the glimmer of his glacial eyes. 

Sonic bolted upright, alert, tensely poised and awaiting Sally's signal or instruction. But even he was not fast enough to stop a single trigger finger from twitching just an inch the wrong way.

The princess was utterly incapable of making a decision, for the first time in her life. She just stood wringing her hands, staring at the scene unfolding.

Naugus snarled, an eerie half-growl, half-shriek. "If you swear to this putrid lot of furrballs, boy, then you have MY word that this asthmatic, rheumatic old cripple' will do your old uncle . . ." he pressed the point harder against the skin of the boy's temple ". . . PROUD." 

An agonizing silence. None of the three Freedom Fighters moved, all save the nonchalant flick of Geoffrey's wrist as he dragged on his cigarette. The smoky odor of his apathy began to fill the close, dank chamber and to sting Sally's nostrils. "Well?" the skunk queried, looking to his compatriots—really, at the princess, spurning the glowering Sonic. 

"We're not going anywhere," Sally finally retorted, in a taut voice. "Not until I'm SURE of something." She clenched her fists, having regained her iron will.

"Perhaps I was unclear." Naugus rose his humanoid hand high above Snively's perspiring head; his eyes squeezed shut as if he were in feverish concentration. A snarl rippled on his pasty reptilian lips. "Allow me to emphasize the POINT!" 

A rumbling, loud, roaring, deafening. The ground below the water began to quake, all except for the place far from the entrance where Naugus stood clutching Snively, the eye of the conjurer's storm. The pressure unearthed a multitude of jagged, algae-hewn stalagmites from far beneath the surface; each deadly razor jutted up under the three Freedom Fighters and threatened murder, and they scrambled yelping and gasping not to be impaled. "If you swear to them," the wretched sorcerer expounded in Snively's ear, in a thundering reprimand that was surprisingly forceful in contrast to his typical wheeze, "then they will all DIE, not just these three, but ALL of them—I will FIND them, little hairless one, ALL of your furry friends, and DISMEMBER THEIR INNARDS! Why? Because I ENJOY spiting those who double cross me! Don't believe me? All you have to do is think on your UNCLE'S current plight!" 

At once Snively understood. His mission of redemption had become far more meaningful now: He had to disown his newfound companions in order to save them. And all because Naugus's sense of humor had taken a turn for the cruel; all because his contempt was starving for its next victim. 

Then the true horror struck Snively: HE had once been like Naugus. "You mean I . . ."

"You will LIE to them. You will tell them you HATE their hides. And they will ABANDON you, Snively, so that I may do as I FANCY with you, my old BUDDY." The sorcerer grinned; dozens of layers of wrinkles folded and curled back to show rows of glistening shark-like fangs, all beautiful as glass prisms and lethal as a snake's kiss. "WHATEVER I please . . . that is, unless you don't mind adding a few more souls to your count of lives lost . . . by YOUR HANDS." 

Snively gasped as if struck in the gut, sweat beads drenching his forehead; the very idea of letting all of Knothole be exterminated, due once again to the crime of his cowardice . . . it made his stomach churn. Naugus's voice became his father's, taunting and jeering, telling him he was worthless, that he would never have the guts to damn himself for the salvation of another being. No, father would be WRONG this time. Snively would not sacrifice another living creature for his safety ever again. He COULD not. Not for their sake, nor for the sake of doing good, but, he miserably knew, for his OWN relief. Because it just HURT too much—it was just too excruciating—to see himself proven a failure again, a coward again, a loser again. After all, he was damned anyway . . . wasn't he? "Alright," the human coughed. ". . . Alright, you old swine. I'll do it." His tear ducts had befallen a drought; his face was flat of emotion. He no longer cared NOW.

Naugus snapped his fingers; immediately the sewer fell to silence. Feigned fury filled the sorcerer's words. "Oh no you don't! You'll not wriggle out of _our deal_ that easily!" He placed the crossbow in his belt. "Snively," he then added, in the sickening sweet tone of an overbearing parent, "do you have something to say to your . . . FRIENDS? Of your . . ." He rasped a laugh ". . . . own free will'?"

" _Our deal_?' " Sonic parroted softly. "Oh, _man_."

"_Quiet_, Sonic," sally breathed. And Geoffrey dragged on his cigarette—and sneered.

Snively could not bear to face his would-be rescuers. He did not crave the glory of martyrdom, even now as he stood before them, one cloaked in the deceptive stench of a traitor. "Freedom is a fool's dream," he hissed, a knife in the tip of his soft voice. "Here is my" . . . He gulped. So hard to swallow down the truth and retch up lies, now, when it finally concerned HIS hide. When it meant saving THEIRS. Ah, never before had his acting skills been so glorious—for his words were fueled by genuine anger, anger at himself. But hell, why not go out with a bang? He'd be the Judas Iscariot, the Benedict Arnold, of the 3200's, the name that fishwives would whisper to their naughty children to hush them. _Ah, Snively, so you have your fame and glory at last._ _You fool_. .". . . Here's m-my confession: I _hate _the lot of you. You're _beneath_ me. You're a stinking bunch of dung and fleas, and I pleasure ONLY in your suffering. I pleasure in your blood on my hands and under my fingernails. I pleasure in the thought that your king should die and your culture stagnate. I want you all _dead,_ rotting with the worms. I came here to expose you to my uncle." Finally he stopped, the vehemence in his words putting him at the brink of hyperventilation, his brow glistening with sweat. 

__

I hate you for not believing me in the first place.

I hate me for giving you cause to hesitate. I hate ME. Look at me, the puppeteer's hand is behind my back, up through my soul, his words crawling like fingers into my lips—look, I'm a damned mannequin. That's all, a puppet. A pawn, all my bloody LIFE. Can't you bloody SEE?

"Good boy," Naugus crooned, patting him harshly on the head. Snively wished so dreadfully to buck the crabclaw off his scalp, but that would reveal his hatred, and prove Naugus a liar. A hint so subtle, and yet it would cause the death of the only people who had made him his OWN puppeteer. So he let the claw rest like a rock on his skull, yanking and tangling his wild hair. 

"He's fakin' it!" Sonic's rebellion curdled in his throat and strangled him, cutting his words off in sputters. He made fists, crouched forward, ready to sprint at a word. "He. . . he's MAKIN' him say that, or else why w-would he have to hold him back? Tell me w-why. . . ." The hedgehog's arms fell at his sides with the futility of it, for Sally's face had gone vengefully black. He only wanted Sally to feel vindicated in her judgments, but was convinced already, just as much as she, that she had trusted Snively too much. "YOU . . ." the Princess attempted to articulate her fury. She clenched her fists until her claws extracted from her fingertips. 

And finally the words came, words she had first uttered to Snively in the detox ward of Knothole, words of requited hate. "The feeling's mutual, Mr. Kintobor." 

Naugus wheezed a cackle. "Fine, excellent! Go on then, go crawling on your bellies out of my sight, Freedom Fighters." He slung Snively close to his side, twisting the human's arm behind his back, to threaten the pain of contradiction, as he added, "I don't really see the point in detaining you, as Snively here has VOLUMES to speak to me about the location of your PRECIOUS little tree-hugging community!" 

For a flash of a second, Snively lost his self-sacrificial resolve and his eyes gaped at Sally, pleaded, begged and groveled for her to detect the obvious lies in the sorcerer's words. Anything to avoid one more stain on his innumerably disgraced honor—for he no longer wished to die a traitor. 

But it was too late. Too late. 

He was being dragged through the tunnels now, dragged away by Naugus's claw—away from the light. Awayfrom salvation. Away from the faces that had dared to trust him, as the Mobians turned and ran, ran, and vanished—and escaped. God, how he wished they knew he'd saved them rather than betrayed them. Again. He choked on foul water as he was haphazardly lurched down a bend in the Doomsday Project's pipes, as his head was carelessly submerged, as he was then slung like a rag doll over Naugus's back. The wizard wheezed a laugh. Surrendering to despair and to inevitable oblivion, Snively at last blacked out.

Something about being strapped to a metal chair under a feverish heat lamp in the Main Control Room made Snively prone to recollection. The bonds about his wrists and ankles were made of wire, and it was beginning to cut fine lines through his flesh. His fingers, though, began to tingle numbly with the loss of blood circulation, so he hardly felt the pain. Hell, He'd been there, alone, with only the desolate whine of poorly oiled gears to serenade his ears, for what had to have been hours. But with no windows to the free world outside, he had no way of being certain. He drifted from waking horror to dozing restlessness, and back, forcing back thoughts of suicide, of finishing the job for Naugus before the sorcerer could get the satisfaction of his suffering screams. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he dug for the memory of his first foolish attempt to realign his loyalties with his soon-to-be executioner. 

Naugus had always been a controversial man. To him, to his uncle, to the kingdom. Every one of them had a vague sense of the idiocy of trusting him, and yet the inability to pinpoint the cause of their malaise inevitably led them to an alliance. Snively had been no exception. 

He remembered making that pact with him, the pact that the wizard had broken months ago when he had exiled the boy from the city. It had been only one short year ago. The first day that the despicable old traitor, and the king, had emerged from the Void—the first day Snively remembered his uncle tasting the terror that had been his certainty, his constant, for a decade. Snively had gotten five minutes alone with the formidable creature, five minutes when he had discovered erratic energy emissions from the Void--and had investigated. Had been ambitious, covetous of that which was his uncle's one lover: power. Before Robotnik had entered and his nephew presented a commendable façade of surprise, announcing the "Void activity in the Great Unknown," Snively had urged Naugus to usurp the awful man who had "forced" him to betray the sorcerer: to lock him forever in the maddening silence of the Void. Shrewdness coating his eyes, the wizard had accepted, and struck a deal with the uncharacteristically gullible human: If he swore allegiance to the sorcerer, and released him from his prison, Snively could count on Naugus spilling Robotnik's blood. His arrogance making him reckless, Snively had agreed. _"Well, well," he'd purred, seconds after ending the private transmission between them, "so Naugus finally did it."_ _How full of lurid hope he'd been in that moment, chuckling a tribute to his long-awaited revenge. "_This_ should be _very_ interesting." His long-awaited crack at power._ Power—_power_—again that deceptive beauty that a weak man believed was the only true tool of Freedom. Only a fool. So he had been hoodwinked again, by a man molded of the same clay as his uncle. 

__

It was perhaps that infatuation with power that had prevented him from going through with his side of the bargain. On Doomsday, the day Robotnik had presumably died, nothing had stood between Snively and releasing Naugus from the Void as promised. No angry fist to throttle him for his betrayal. For a moment, he'd even consoled his few reservations, his few fears of taking up the metallic throne and the legacy of killing the Freedom Fighters, by declaring "Now, it's my turn, and I'm NOT alone, I'm NOT alone. . ." It had become his mantra. But all patterns of speech can be interrupterd, and so had his promises been . . . when he'd first found his place in Robotnik's great iron chair. It was HIS. His to survey the planet from, not to be shared. So when Naugus came to him in another transmission from the Void, sneering at the king and the former despot who were his new inmates, and requested his release. . . . Snively had refused. Boldly, to his face. . . 

Before proceeding to taunt Robotnik, and deny him his own groveling for the freedom he'd denied so many others. King Max had not bothered to beg—either he was too proud, or too wise to Snively's cruel, merciless temperament. Still the boy reveled in taunting him as well—in promising to "take care" of the princess, his dearly beloved daughter. Yes, Snively had become a backstabber to rival both the sorcerer and his uncle combined_._ God, what a filth he was. And he had _liked_ the feeling then. The _payback_. 

Then.

__

But all actions have their consequences, and it is never too late for a long-dormant conscience to emerge. Thus, when his frail regime fell to repeated assaults by the Freedom Fighters, to blown generators and drained electricity, he had been forced to free his fellow conspirator from the Void—accidentally allowing time for the king and Robotnik to rush out as well. And none of the three of them had been happy. Even after the king had escaped Robotropolis courtesy of Sonic, he'd had a very angry Naugus and a very eagerly punitive Robotnik to reckon with. Naugus, thinking him no threat, thankfully ignoring Robotnik's warnings otherwise, had cast him out to the cold wilderness to die. But this time—oh, this time—Snively knew that he'd be far less than fortunate. This time he _would_ die. And this time, with that conscience of his ripe and healthy, he felt like a great stinking pile of crap for it. 

For being _futile_.

The wizard in question, as if reading Snively's soul, entered the room in that instant, a slouching, submissive Robotnik in tow. He strolled across the narrow bridge over the metal eating gear pit, tail swishing with agitation, and seated himself on the throne. Snively felt sweat beads cascading down his flushed cheeks, and set his jaw so as to retain some manner of dignity, so as to not even bother to wipe it away, as his uncle lumbered up to him and removed his bonds. He was jerked upright, and thrown to the ground in front of the throne; his head swam, making him faint and almost giddy. He was soon to be sobered.

Naugus clicked his claw against the metallic throne arm, an act that unnerved Snively. It sent shivers of fury down the cowering Robotnik's spine—for HIS throne was being touched by the usurper mage. Were he not in such a state of despair, Snively might have laughed at his uncle's obvious consternation towards Naugus's indiosyncracies. The wizard spoke, stroking his beard as one would a fragile kitten. Then he pointed a claw at the sweat-soaked youth. "Snively . . . I am patient. There is still a chance to spare yourself from pure anguish. Swear allegiance to me and we can forget this whole childish phase you've undergone—from the pact we made while I was still in the Void to this very present moment." Again stroking the beard—it was like a nervous tic. Robotnik leered up beside his nephew, heavy feet planted dangerously near the boy's fragile, arched spine. 

Oh, the temptation—the temptation to give in, as if to a drug or a drink, an obsession or a lover—to take the easy and self-destructive path to numbness again. To die quickly and painlessly, to lose his soul again, in that lovely and awful black city. But, no. NO. 

__

I CAN control what I do. 

"I . . . wouldn't take a LEAK . . . for YOU, Naugus. I DENY you." Snively turned to his uncle then, pain and fury in his face, for he anticipated the anguish to come, the subjection to tortures subtle and blunt, but could not bring himself to dodge them—not, especially, when he knew they were coming _anyway_. "And YOU," he snarled, a new register of hatred—and of power—in his small, nasal voice, into the face of his every horror, neglect, and shame, "YOU can go to HELL and burn from your innards to your filthy fat skin—from the inside out—and I'll watch you while I LAUGH and SPIT on you, you worthless SCUM! You KILLER of innocence! Come on, then! HIT me! Hit me if you still think it'll BREAK me!" He drew every spiteful, cruel fiber of his being into a twisted, demonic sneer. "I DARE you to find out the TRUTH in that, UNCLE' Julian!"

He winced then—cringed, to prepare for the anguish—but it didn't come. The nephew of tyrants opened his eyes, one at a time, reluctantly, and beheld in shock that his uncle was just staring at him, slack-jawed, blinking, his orange moustache wilting like a dying tree root. The fat lips parted—he was saying something . . . so softly. Something like "YOU dare ME?" And for a fleeting instant, something alien came into the once-despot's smoldering eyes—something akin to epiphany, and then . . . _fear_. 

But it passed quickly, and Snively could not be sure if it was only his ravaged imagination playing tricks on him. His own jaw hung ajar at the inaction of the man he knew so thirsted to inflict pain at the slightest opportunity . . . 

But then another chance presented itself. "Julian," Naugus, peevish from the boy's steadfastness, snapped, "search your nephew for weapons. NOW."

Obeying, Robotnik bent over and grasped Snively with his great gluttonous hands and frisked him from head to toe, grinning nastily at his nephew's victimized state. Snively tried to numb his thoughts against being utterly revolted until the procedure was finished. He prayed, for the first time in years, prayed fervently, that his uncle would not find the deroboticizer chip on his person. So fervently, in fact, that he forgot to pay attention to the movements and placements of Robotnik's hands. 

Then a sound—a peculiar one indeed—a scurrying of sorts, and yet the tink-tank of metal against metal, from above them—from the air ducts directly above their heads. The sound of something retreating. To Snively it was vaguely familiar. To Robotnik, evidently, judging by the rage in his face, hauntingly so. "Master Naugus," he rumbled, "I hate to interrupt, but, did you hear—"

"Ooooh, ho ho, nooooo you don't, Overlander." The wizard wheezed a cackle. "You may be crafty enough to throw off my sensory perception with one of your spy bugs, but I am not THAT ignorant in matters of machinery. There's _nothing_ up there Julian!" He nodded at one of the ducts. "Nothing—and _no one_. Don't flatter yourself—I didn't fall for your tricks. Now step aside." 

Robotnik shook his head feverishly. True sincerity—the kind which made Snively's skin crawl, for if his uncle weren't lying, what was lurking up there? The despot stepped towards his new master. "B-but I WASN'T. . . you see, the--"

"SHUT up, fool!" The wizard shoved the hulking human to the side like a gnat, and the matter was dropped. "I have a more entertaining issue to resolve at the moment." He rose from his seat, but made no attempt to approach Snively. For a second the human nearly indulged in a sense of safety. . . 

But then the sorcerer snapped his fingers. 

And the pain began. The anguish. 

His guts felt as if a bullet, a rusty and blunt knife, had been slowly wedged, pierced, through them—but from the INSIDE. The _inside_. He bit his lip halfway through a horrified shriek, and doubled over. Even Robotnik, at first, was appalled. 

Naugus rose his claw over his head then heaved mightily and pulled some invisible weight towards him—the pain escalated and Snively's stomach lulled forward—as if it wanted to follow the wizard's gesture. "How's that feel, BOY?" The sorcerer jeered. "I DO hope I'm not being too HARD on you!" Again the pull of the arm. Then he began to twist it, like a rotating gear, like molding taffy candy strings, while clicking his claw without ceasing. The agony became a fainter, kind of queer feeling. Snively took a breath while he could, smacking the sweat from his face. Devil may care what they thought of him now, so long as he survived. 

Robotnik looked on, vaguely entranced. But he seemed very preoccupied with another thought he could not quite abandon—that same strange countenance of fear. Too terrified to consider the cause of his uncle's distraction, Snively gaped down at his gut, eyes wide—still his organs pressed, as if drawn to a magnet, against the front of his torso. His rib-jutting belly was now bloated, swelling and bulging forward, in the direction of Naugus's claw as if he'd eaten an endless quantity of food. _Pressure_—he felt his skin would burst beneath the pressure. A hand flew to his midriff and felt something slithering. His _innards _were actually MOVING. 

He could no longer bear it. 

"Don't you have any concept of MERCY?" It came out a gag, because Naugus was twisting his arm all the more vigorously, twisting something inside the boy's guts. "If you do, _give_ it to me! Please, I BEG you—" a tortured whine aborted his pleas as he felt his intestines and belly squirm left and right, and then back in place. Snively tried again to clutch his gut, but a current of energy from the sadistic wizard's claw immobilized his limbs. "Oh, daaaaaamn, oh, owwwww . . ." Blood—it was in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Oh God, ooohhh"

Naugus guffawed, unheeding—or perhaps enjoying. "MERCY? The filthiest of all words, I say. Mercy equates vulnerability, and vulnerability death. I was merciful to you, little one, the first time I cast you out of this city, because I thought you _harmless_. I _underestimated_ you then. But not now, rest _assured_—now you will die _most miserably!"_ One final shock of pain, causing the boy to wail outright, and he flicked his wrist once, cutting off from whatever accursed source of magic he had tapped. Snively went crashing to the chrome floor, the floor he had once walked across a Chief Commander and killer, a FEARED man. He saw, bleakly, his tattered reflection in the shining metal. So this was his grand fate, after all—to die in Robotropolis.

His mind went to King Max, to the monarch's similar rejection of mercy and second chances, all bred by his own horrible acts, and his uncle's, and at once wished the two of them could simply cease to exist . . . so that no one else would hurt because of them. 

So that good people like the King would never be tempted to become accursed scourges like Naugus. 

No. He had to live now. He HAD to live so that he could prove to Maximilian Acorn, and his daughter, and her friends the Freedom Fighters . . . and to Bunnie Rabbott . . . and to Sprocket Apollo. . . that mercy was NOT a mistake. Not EVER. He coughed, and summoned his courage. "HARDER, then, you old bastar—" 

  
He got no further. Again the wizard's claw clicked together, and Snively found himself partially suspended, floating, in the air, and the pain starting all over again. 

Robotnik lumbered over to his master, lips curled into a sneer, and breathed something in the wizard's ear. Keen spiteful pleasure flooded Naugus's face. And suddenly his decision reversed itself. If Snively weren't in such excruciating pain, immediate suspicion would have seized him. But now, in his moment of anguish, he was grateful for any escape. The pressure in his belly was released, and he flopped to the ground one final time with a grunt, this time staining the sleek chrome floor with spatters of red and spittle. He fought the urge to let a sob rip out his throat. Instead he retched.

"Go on, then, back to Knothole, you meddlesome fool," the old sorcerer hissed in his ear. Naugus had not moved from his place towering high above the boy, but it was if his voice were suddenly everywhere, outside, inside Snively's head, ringing madly. " If you can live long enough to get there, that is. Go on back to your little furry friends, go kiss their posteriors for all I care . . . if you REALLY think they'll believe you THIS time around. For _trust_ is a fragile creature indeed . . . "

And with that, both of Snively's attackers vaporized into thin air. 

Blackness, then. All-encompassing, a if he'd been cast into the cold and unforgiving void of outer space. His eyes began to focus, blearily, on his surroundings, far from Central Command. 

He might have indulged himself in the comforting thought that it was all the worst nightmare of his twenty-six years, were the bloodstain in his shirt and the aching in his gut not still present. 

And if he weren't suddenly strewn across a stinking junkpile just outside the city limits of Robotropolis. 

He did not pause to wonder how Naugus's magic got him there, or to muse on the severity of his wounds. He just stood, resolved still to live, and plunged into the woods. 

A desperate thought halted him; he stabbed his fingers into his pockets in search of the microchip . . . ah yes, there it was, right where he'd left it! All this pain, but not without purpose! He was redeemed! Still more resolute, he crashed through the haven of the Great Forest, and found that this time the trees and foliage bent and curved to his beckon call. He was no longer an intruder. The thankful forest floor kept his feet company as they marched still closer to his gold glowing destination—his first source of hope—the Ring Pool at the edge of Knothole. 

Finding his way home had become so much easier his time around.

Hours passed. The burning in Snively's belly was growing intense, like a throbbing torch, when he finally reached Knothole. It was too dark, however, underneath the star-concealing trees, for him to examine himself. So on he trudged.

He became vaguely aware of a numbness, a tingling sensation throughout his toes and fingers, brought on by sheer fatigue. But the tiny mechanical treasure was still in his boot, and he knew it was worth all his weariness. Somehow, he knew it would make everything alright.

The Ring Pool beside him basked in the soft warm light of the village, a shining beacon. Brainlessly, he stumbled towards it, gripping the data chip in his clammy, mudcaked palm. One foot sank into the water's edge—cool, soothing—when he realized what he was doing, and jolted himself out of his trance. With an effort he lurched back towards the huts, only to be stopped dead in his tracks by the form of Princess Sally.

She was half-concealed in the forest blackness, but the rage on her face would have been unmistakable from a distance of ten miles. 

Next to her stood a more welcoming figure—Bunnie, his first pardoner. Yet in her eyes shimmered great torrents of tears—more, it seemed, than there had been earlier that night when she had discovered her hope of derobotization was gone. He knew that look. It was a look of one betrayed. Again. 

"Bunnie!" His heart gushed. He wanted more than life itself to repay her now. "Bunnie, I HAVE to tell you, I FOUND—"

The rabbit covered her face, cutting him off with a cry—denying him. "Oh, Sally, Ah just can't DO this—"

A movement in the darkness—Sally touched her surrogate sister's flesh arm with the most aching of tenderness, of pity, and pushed her gently aside. "Go," was all she said. Revealed again behind her hands, the rabbit's face clumped into a sob and, with a broken wail, she fled to the farthest hut. Every clink of her metal feet against the stones shot a bullet through his soul. And Snively's defenses vanished with her. His advocate had abandoned him. Now he was alone with his judge.

He swallowed. "Princess . . ." Though clean of wrongdoing, he suddenly felt, under her stare, as if he were drowning in shame, and his voice grew hoarse with it. "I . . . have something to—"

He got no further. Sally's delicate wrist lashed out from the shadows—a crisp, stinging slap across his cheek.

"How DARE you!" A vicious voice unlike Sally's commanded all his senses upon her and away from the data chip: away from much of ANYTHING else. Her body went ramrod stiff but her lip quivered with the words. Snively watched in horror as her face contorted into something pale, hollow, twisted with hatred. "MURDERER! You've gone and revealed our location to HIM, haven't you? You've gone and proven my nightmares RIGHT!" 

Snively became aware that her words went far beyond the misperceived wrong of this night. They went all the way back to his deeds of eleven years past, to the first time he hurt her—to the Coup. His dazed and mute response, born of this realization, only seemed to further condemn him in her eyes. "B-but you LEFT me back there," he attempted. Momentary rage filled him and made his words caustic. "You didn't even ASK me my side of—"

But then she pounced on him—literally pounced, with all her scant weight, fur and claws—her flow of curses loudening, and began to beat his chest wildly with both fists. And then Snively couldn't focus on anything, certainly no coherent words of self-justification, besides where next to jerk his fists to ware off her blows. Finally, struggling for a mixture of gentle firmness, he caught her wrists and shoved them to her sides; he implored in a tight, desperate voice over her shrieks, "Please, Princess, oh, please, STOP!" 

But for the first time in years, Sally would not be appeased by Reason. She thirsted for retribution from her world's killers, and she finally had one of them at her mercy. Somehow Snively understood that, and so he let her continue to writhe, to spit and scream and kick like a rabid beast, struggling to free her hands, far too upset to utilize her many seasoned martial arts maneuvers to best him. He could hardly blame her.

"You've gone and TOLD them!" She wailed, and now her tears poured fresh. "We fed you, gave you refuge and MERCY! And this is the second time you've thanked us with BETRAYAL! COWARD! You've sold the souls of my people and made my life a misery! How can you hurt me so when all I ever did was show you compassion? Tell me, just TELL me--what breaks inside a man in order that he is SO capable of uncaring?"

"A question better asked of my uncle!" He managed to squeak for himself, barely audible.

"YOU ARE YOUR UNCLE!" she roared. "BECAUSE YOU ACCEPT WHAT HE DOES!"

And these final words were too much to bear. Each of them tore open Snively's heart like a jagged, rusty scythe. 

And he dropped the deroboticizer chip. 

His mouth opened, but this time all he could manage was a sob of self-loathing; the remorse was excruciating now, with no other circumstance or person to blame and nowhere to hide. He could no longer save himself by withdrawing into apathy, into self-interest and numbness. Her words drew him into an uncomfortable realm far beyond such anonymity, such blessed nonexistence. Oh yes, excruciating. 

"Oh, God," he moaned, "oh Lord God . . ." Then his eyes were wet; he was clumsy with the emotion that came now, unsure how to restrain it. But it only further aroused Sally's contempt.

"How can YOU be sad?" she screamed. "How dare YOU cry, you fiend! No, YOU can't cause so much pain, without offering mercy or kindness, and then expect to receive what you NEVER gave! You don't have the RIGHT to pity! NO!" She sobbed, every syllable explosive with meaning. "YOU DON'T HAVE MY PITY!" This she shrieked directly in Snively's agonized face. 

Then she found herself really looking at him. 

Those eyes . . . those same luminous, grieving eyes again seized her. They begged for nothing from her, only offering their immeasurable sadness. And tears . . . tears like hers. Many times she'd seen them brimming, just barely rippling around the perimeter of his irises . . . but this time they fell—they were shed. They were REAL. 

And then she saw it dropped on the ground—the data chip, giving off a tiny glimmer . . . reflected from the latest ring surfacing from the pool. Her eyes raked every tiny inch of it; Snively followed her gaze and knew she'd finally seen it. It took only seconds for full realization to strike her. She gasped, turning on him again. "Do you think that one brave act will pardon you?" She demanded in a whisper. "No. Nonono . . . I can't allow it!" 

Sally gave one last core trembling cry, gave a vain last shove against Snively to push him away . . . and then collapsed in his arms. 

He accepted her without question or protest, letting her rest there in silence, but was too shocked to touch her, to pat or stroke her—to MOVE. Her weeping crescendoed and echoed against the trees, and together the enemies sunk to the moist grassy earth on their knees, the human following the squirrel's lead. Only seconds passed before his fingers bravely rested on one of her crumpled shoulders at an attempt at comfort—and immediately she lashed away from him. She collapsed again into a praying mantis squat several feet from him, nostrils flaring.

Snively bowed his head, speaking in a wretched whisper, between his teeth. "Forgive me, Princess." He'd had an elaborate and well-worded explanation in mind, one to tug at their heartstrings, to explain for his self-christened mission to deroboticize. . . but now these were the only words he could muster: "I didn't want you to clean up after me . . . again."

Embarrassed by her vulnerability, she wiped her face. "I do forgive you. But I can never condone what you collaborated in doing. To my family, to my friends, to countless innocents!" She heaved a sigh of relief, as if having finally been able to lurch out into the open in plain words what had been smoldering inside her for years—a deep current of hatred for him. She watched him intently now for a reaction.

He saw it as clearly as it was revealed, that hate. More of his tears drizzled, spilling silently but uncontrollably from his eyes. Snively rarely cried; he hadn't for over a decade now, not in front of another living creature. He'd wept when first exiled into the forest, but that was before he'd thought he had any hope. Now he cried for someone else besides himself—and when something disturbed his spirit so deeply as to penetrate that core of unfeeling and selfishness, that sheet of ice over his heart, his tears came the most bitter. His grief, so long to accumulate, was endless. So helplessly he stayed crouching before her, cheeks blazing scarlet, awaiting the rushing slash of the guillotine. Eyes cocked towards the treetops, he spoke as if giving himself his own Last Rites. "My father told me I'd never find someone I wouldn't manage to hurt in the end. When I found myself . . . tolerated . . . among your ranks, I thought I'd finally proven the old bastard wrong. I so dreadfully wanted to." 

Sally grew awkward. She fumbled with the fiery auburn hair that, in her livid outburst, had escaped the small circlet crown her father had forced her to wear. No matter how much she strove, though, she couldn't smooth away the evidence of her struggle. One look at his pathetic face proved he couldn't hide his demons anymore, either. She wasn't sure if his remorse satisfied her, but such indisputable evidence of his humanity . . . it brought her back to her senses immediately. She stood slowly, gracefully, the dirt falling from her arms and knees like shedding skin.

Her face was dry, composed, utterly discreet. "Please, return to your cell, before I allow Geoffrey to report your escape."

Snively didn't move. In fact, he didn't seem to have heard her at all. His arms hung at his sides. She realized he would need more prodding. "Whatever you were doing in Mobitropolis—Robotropolis," she began, but as she corrected herself, the lump in her throat swelled until she felt she could no longer breathe. She knew exactly what he was doing. But in HER city. In her LOST city. "Just GO! Get out of my sight!" She gasped, shivering all over, clenching her fists.

Snively leaned gently to the side, retrieving the data chip from the ground. He knew that she could not accept what he had done just yet. Forgiveness was difficult, and it changed someone's perspective about another creature irrevocably. He knew she still wanted to think of him as a venomous snake, a monster. He wished he could feel that way about her, too—but he could not. So he held the chip up to her bewildered face. 

A long silence. 

A raw wind passed through the woods, biting their skin. Finally Sally took he chip. She looked between it and Snively only once before breathing sorrowfully, "Now, please go."

Snively did as he was told. He rose, took five hobbling steps towards the prison hut, then Sally's voice, the sound of frustration personified, stopped him again. "Snively, you LIVE! That is what troubles me! You are no metallic centurion, no machine without a soul. You are NOT programmed," and she crossed the distance between them, "and so there IS hope for you. You have free will, and I have seen tonight how it has changed you for the BETTER. It troubles me and elates me, this change—this fact that you live."

"All the more reason for you to hate me." Snively's voice was a weary monotone, the buzz of flies over a long rotted carcass. "No one programmed me to help bring down your father's dynasty. I CHOSE it. You can NOT forgive me You were right." He moaned, covering his face. " How dare I ask it?"

A long pause before the princess slashed through the silence with her bare logic. "Who are YOU to tell ME if I can forgive MY wronger?" 

This, of all chastisements, caught the nephew of Julian off guard. It was eerily like the wisdom Uncle Chuck had offered that past afternoon. ". . . W-well, I . . ."

She rose an index finger, dictating his fate and his worth in the universe as if it were the driest—and most thoroughly proven—of all academia. "Tonight, POTENTIAL—POSSIBILITY--was opened before my eyes, Snively, and I recongnized it as something which might become GOOD. You CHOSE of your own free will to HELP us, not to harm us. You see, Snively, it is not so easy to hate a mind that can choose and a heart that can love."

Snively was stunned. His smile was unbridled.

But then he began to feel . . . disoriented, both befuddled and supremely peaceful. That pain in his belly was growing fast, and now the world around him was hazy, spinning. He felt suddenly, violently sick. "I think . . . I think I'm in trouble . . ."

He coughed, staggering, lurching forward. Sally cried out in surprise and caught him as he collapsed. She turned him over and laid him down in the grass; something felt warm and wet. She looked down and a gasp caught in her throat—a pool of blood all over his shirt soaked her white nightgown in crimson. 

"No!" Sally clasped the data chip—all their lives he'd stolen, all their lives he'd restored in this tiny object tonight—no, he could not die NOW. That blood on his shirt was for HER. "No, stay with me—don't go to sleep, Snively, stay WITH me!" She stood and began to scream for help. Her cries echoed wildly in the trees, and soon lights snapped on in the huts and footsteps were heard growing closer in the darkness. Sally tore off her vest and pillowed Snively's head in it, and murmured to him to keep him from slipping away altogether. It was then that she realized that however the night would end, there would be one less enemy to ravage her world in the morning. Whether Snively died . . . or _lived_. . . 

"Blimey. How timely _this_ is." Rude, irreverent words jolted Sally from her vigil. It was to be the last person from which she desired help who came to resolve Snively's fate. A torch blazed in the princess's vision, red and orange tongues licking away the black of night. It was Geoffrey, flanked by a murmuring mob of Knotholers, the same Knotholers who had shared a campfire wit hthe ovelander hours earlier and slept as he tried to atone for their broken dreams . . . 

Geoffrey's hand outstretched in the moonlight, revealing the burden crumpled in his fist: a _noose_. He saw the revolted curl of the monarch's muzzle, and expounded in a tone that stung with condescendence: "You can't deny that he deserves it _now_, Luv. After what he tried to do. I watched that whole bloody exchange between ya just now. All lies, clear as day." 

Sally's hackles rose like thistles. "Geoffrey, just_ look_!" she snapped, every syllable rushing quiet fury. She rose from a predatory crouch beside Snively, stabbing a finger to the skunk's chest, so abruptly that he stumbled back. She clutched the deroboticizer datachip in her palm, flashed it at him like a badge. He only squinted back, failing to register its significance, shaking his head as though ridding his nose of a gnat or a foul smell. Finally Sally was exasperated. Her words were simple, but burning with an acid that made him stammer. "_You_ don't know anything about _anything_! I'm tired of your poorly-concealed attempts to let out all your rage at the past ten years on . . . on the _wrong person_!"

The skunk made a stunned noise in his throat, like a man hacking up a ball of spit. He shoved his torch into a nearby bear's hand and advanced towards her, arms imploringly outstretched. "S-Sally, for Crikey's Sa—" 

"_No_." She tore the noose from his hands and recoiled, squatted back over Snively. Her eyes narrowed to daggers, daring intrusion. "_Where_ is my _father_? This . . ." and she flung an arm to indicate the flame-wielding mob, "_can't_ have been arranged under _his_ jurisdiction!" 

Geoffrey glanced sidelong at the brooding crowd he'd gathered; they were not appeased by the princess's ill-placed mercy. Sensing this, he regained a wisp of his arrogance. His voice lilted with it. "Why trouble His Majesty over an ingrate's apology come _ten years too late_?" The crowd rumbled in angry agreement, and Geoffrey proceeded, invigorated, more venomous than ever. "It's _obvious_ he's done it to cover up a secret alliance with the sorcerer Naugus—the alliance WE stumbled upon this evening, Sally. He's been sent with this device to _trick_ us into _charity_ once again-- " 

"Not quite." Two forms glimmered in the moonlight, cantering across the bridge, one tal land lankey, the other unmistakably the stout, spiney form of a hedgehog. Sprocket and Uncle Chuck. It was the sage old hedgehog who spoke now, brandishing . . . a crude arm-insert _tape recorder_, in his hand: "Sprocket and I have spent the night scouring the air ducts, per our young Kintobor friend's suggestion, to keep searching for the deroboticizer chip. Sprocket spotted Snively being dragged into the Main Control Room, so we hustled over there like a schoolteacher to a scolding. And what we heard in those ducts, _completely_ incognito, was nothing short of _incredible_. That data chip was _found_, alright. And by _Snively_, of all people. But not for the cunning, cruel reasons _you've _conjured, St. John." He thrust himself to the center of the crowd; a far more respected figure than even Geoffrey, he was readily offered both space and ears. "Rather, it was an act of gratitude . . . and _loyalty_." And, flanked by a battle-ready Sprocket, he pressed the tape recorder's play button. 

Static, audio peach fuzz, obstructed much of the altercation that sprang into the night breeze. But crucial dialogues, and their speakers, were unmistakable: "_Swear allegiance to me, and we can forget . . ." ". . . _I wouldn't take a leak for you, Naugus . . . I DENY you . . . MERCY . . . give it to me . . ."_ " You will die . . ." " _harder, then, you old bastar--"

And Chuck shut off the tape, a challenging eyebrow risen. Born of an admirable fidelity, a rebellion, the final word "_bastard_," was uttered by a nasal voice known far too well to be mistaken; and it rang and echoed and bounced madly in the treetops until it was etched in every present creature's brain. Snively stirred on the ground, ever so slightly, and a faint smile almost curved his lips. The mob--all around the hedgehog, and the Robian dog, whose teeth were bared beneath his metal lip--was stunned. And, gradually, like a receding tide or a balloon with a slow leak, their faces lost their passion, and dissolved to uncertainty. "Do you think," the old hedgehog addressed them more gently, "that in light of this evidence, we could allow the _king _to determine this boy's fate?"

As if in accord, the crowd began to diminish, to return to their wearily lit huts. Sonic, Rotor, Antoine, Dulcy, and Bunnie--among them, though having never taken up torches--rushed forward to greet Chuck and Sprocket. The rabbit fell to the ground beside where Sally stood and Snively lay, and began to sob helplessly. It was a rare display coming from Bunnie--the cheerful and irrepressible Bunnie—one only Sally had ever seen before, and only once; it made Sonic and Rotor, hanging back in confusion, both awkward and troubled. But Dulcy, once she understood, soon joined her. As Antoine silently knelt near Bunnie, with an incredulous, reverent murmur of "_Sacre Bleu_," the rabbit stooped to cradle the human's pasty head in her arms, in thanks, but the princess pulled her back and warned her of his frailty. An anxious Tails raced from his nearby hut, hot dog stick still in hand and Rosie in tow. She was heatedly scolding him to return to bed, twice as worried for his fragile innocence. Both froze mid-stride at the sight of the human lying, apparently lifeless, in the dirt. "_Sally_?" the princess's nannie whispered, swooping up the suddenly ashen-faced, glassy-eyed kitsune in her arms. Sally shook her head once. "It's under control. Don't worry." Then she called for Sonic, Sprocket and Geoffrey to help her to carry Snively to Dr. Quack's medical hut.

But the skunk would not be swayed. "I don't understand! _That's_ supposed to _pardon _that little _blackguard_?" He hoisted himself atop a tree stump, striking the air with his fist, as if the face of every human on Mobius were in the wind, leering at him, taunting him. Tears of rage built in those murky blue eyes. His voice, ragged, nearly broke with his wrath. "HOW can you blame ME for hating the kinsman of Robotnik? For wanting him DEAD? Sheep! LEMMINGS! Can't you recall what he's _DONE _to us?"

Time was running out because of one man's misplaced fury. "Geoffrey," Sally breathed, crossed the clearing and rested a hand on his chest, as if breaking to an obstinate, vulnerable child a painful truth. "Can't you see you've done Robotnik's work here as well as Snively _ever_ could have done? With your anger, your slanders, meant to _divide_ us—ultimately, to make us _futile _against him?"

And it was with this that he crumpled down from the stump, to his haunches, at the edge of the bridge. His eyes fell agape, whiskers a-quiver. "I . . ."

"You are _not _wrong to be angry, Geoffrey." Now it was Sprocket who spoke, who knelt down beside the skunk, and Sally, mouth slightly ajar, forced herself not to intrude. Instead, she turned back to Chuck, and to Snively's still form, leaving the two to converse. "You have _every_ right to feel the rage of a thousand children wronged—orphaned—_robbed_. As do _I_, friend." His mind flickered to the past, to the death of his parents by an Overlander; the death, however temporary, of _himself_, by an Overlander. "_As do I_. But it is what you _choose to do _with that anger that determines whether those that you love who are _still here_ will prosper or flounder . . . by _your _hands." 

The skunk would not bring himself to meet eyes with the canine whose sense of forgiveness was staggering. Instead he shoved booted feet into the water and splashed, hard. He sniffed mightily, scrubbed his nose clean with a swipe of his arm, and murmured, with the evident realization that he'd met defeat, "_You_ are his _friend_. It is only _natural_ that you speak for his _benefit_." An unreachable madness, a thick skin of cynicism. His nostrils curled, and he turned away, not to look back, or to join Sally, until long after the dog had risen and left him.

"_Your_ choice, Geoffrey." Sprocket stood, sorrow hanging like great bags under those grieving ore eyes. He moved towards the departing mob, and the mangled body of his dearest friend, eager to carry him to the hospital hut. The farther he went, though, the deeper dug his sorrow, into his metallic chest, for the embittered kingsman. "Yes, believe whatever excuse you want, Mr. St. John. . . It's_ your_ life. Your _deception_." 

Dr, Horatio Quack was unaccustomed to being awakened in the wee hours of the morning—not in the form of anything aside an emergency page from Rotor's messenger pigeon. The thundering on his door, then, derived considerable irritation from his person as he stumbled sleepily to the door of the hospital hut, his white doctor's jacket twisted under his feet. 

"Who is it?" The duck paused in the threshold of the infirmary. His eyes took in Sonic, Sprocket and Geoffrey St. John carrying a bloodied body. Sonic and Sprocket looked all but afraid; the hedgehog scratched the back of his quills with a free hand while the canine glared worriedly at the unconscious body. And Geoffrey looked something between ashamed, angry, and ill. The knocker, standing in front of them, was the Princess herself. "Sally! Who loves ya, baby?" he began to rehearse his quip of olden days with the girl, but then it registered.

Fear—almost fear of moral contamination—was in his eyes when they scrolled over Snively's maimed form. The form of his wronger's kinsman and right-hand man. "You brought HIM here? He's—" 

"Dr. Quack, I know who he is, and what this looks like, but he's . . . he's—" Sally held up the deroboticizer chip, vainly trying to explain and to justify. 

"My patient. He's my patient." The duck set his jaw with steely resolve; in contrast, his eyes filled with compassion. For he had realized that compassion alone was the contagious agent in this situation. "That's all I need to know." He rested a feathered hand on Sally's shoulder. "He WILL be alright."

Sally smiled. "Thank you." She nodded at the three men, who hoisted the same bloodied, whimpering victim into the infirmary room for the second time in months. Only this time, his fate was no longer an indifference to them. This time, as Tails had so wisely declared, Snively's life MATTERED. Perhaps it _always _had—but now, there was an air of _deserving_ about his salvation, an air of cleansing that made mercy both moral _and_ _rewarding_ for the merciful: but more than that, somehow. It rendered their choice, as Chuck had put it, anything but a mistake—rather, a profound _mutual_ respect for the souls, the _existence_, of one another, between the jaded and pure, the human and the Mobian, the betrayer and the betrayed. . . . all these differences _dissolving _in one act of forgiveness and a _requited_ act of gratitude. . . .proving forgiveness anything but futile. . . .transcending all past sins and regrets. . . in the celebration of life's shared _possibility_, an act of mutual self-sacrifice becoming almost. . . _holy_. It was the same promise of starting afresh that had been born when the name "Freedom Fighters" had first been uttered from Sally's lips, at the age of ten years. Forgiving that scrawny, sardonic, seemingly insignificant little Overlander, finding that even _he _still grasped at a sliver of light in the darkness of that decade, was that same kind of . . . _rebirth_. A communal rebirth. 

Sally mused upon all these strange, unexpected and wonderful truths while Quack snapped out a stethoscope, bottle of peroxide, and long syringe. Filling the needle with a potent anesthetic, he murmured soothing words into his patient's ear and injected it into his wrist. Snively moaned softly but otherwise did not stir. His was death's pallor.

"Are you sure he'll?" Sally's words trailed, and she covered her mouth to expel a harsh, nervous sigh. 

Sonic rested a hand on her shoulder as the doctor's keen dark eyes fell on her. They grew hard with determination. "A promise is a promise," Quack pledged, hiking up his shirt sleeves. He nodded at Snively's wasted, gray frame. "He kept his, in the end, to you. And _I_ intend to keep _mine_ to you as _well_. Yes, he WILL live." 

Sprocket's eyes filled with brimming golden compassion as he looked down on his childhood friend. Now, having been silent and vigilant as a shimmering metallic guardian angel, he suddenly spoke. His voice was low, flat—subtly threatening. "And _I_ will _hold you_ to that promise, doctor." He balled a fist.

Quack's lip quirked up, once, wryly. "Understood." He felt around Snively's belly, pressing gently. His brow furrowed—an unsettling sight to Sally, who had never seen him once, in his entire career, baffled. "Strange. . . that feels almost like" Rubber gloves snapped on his hands, he lifted up the human's shirt—and nearly leapt back in repulsion. "_Don't_ look" He tried to shield the gruesome wound from his visitors' eyes, but they saw—it was a greenish-white crystal, eerily similar to those building the very landscape of the world inside the Void. . . 

Impaled in Snively's gut. From the _inside_.out.

"Blimey," Geoffrey coughed, disturbed, for the first time, to the point of feeling true pity, even for Robotnik's nephew. He braced himself against the steel bar of Snively's hospital bed. "What kind of creature is bloody _capable_ of this?" His face darkened; he realized his own softness towards a rotten human, an unspeakably cursed creature. Hastily he hardened his words, impartial, holistic: "I..I mean, of doing thisto _anybody_?"

"_Guess_," Sprocket growled, low, in the bowels of his throat. He looked out the window, towards the direction of the blessedly distant city. Sonic only nodded his agreement, fury raising the fur on his neck on its hackles.

"It's alright," Quack assured them, drawing several sharp, shining tools from his surgical kit. "Magic may have been the cause, but the damaging element is _quite_ grounded in reality. Naugus deliberately left the wound just short of being lethal—he wanted Snively to _suffer_ before he _died_: He expected _us_ , considering the misunderstanding he led us to _believe_, to do the _honors_. But we'll prove him wrong on _both_ counts. All I need do is remove the thing. And all _you _need do is _pray_ it didn't dig deep enough to damage his vitals."

Sally's face acquired a shadow heavier and more fearsome than she herself would have conceived she could muster. Hate thickened the bright glaze in her eyes. "To think us even _halfway_ capable of his treachery—his _cruelty_. . . .That _monster_. I'll _kill _him. He'll be extinguished _yet! I WILL get him_!" Her eyes squeezed shut as Quack began the incision that would slice the crystal out of Snively's belly.

Again the hand on her shoulder, again Sonic's warm, comforting breath on the back of her neck. "WE'LL get him, Sal. WE will." 

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. ". . . .Yeah. _Always_."

"How bout me not blaming you for everything?

How bout me enjoying the moment for once?

How bout how good it feels to finally forgive you?

How bout grieving it all one at a time?

How bout no longer being masochistic?

How bout remembering your divinity?

How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out?

How bout not equating death with stopping?"

--Alanis Morissette

Morning came. And brought with it renewal and promise. Hope. Snively lived. 

As did Sally's promise of ending the cruelty of Naugus and Robotnik. . . and yet now was not the time for such grave thoughts, such burdens and quests. Now was the time for healing alone.

The lingering anesthetics rendered Robotnik's nephew drowsy, but the blur of his cluster of visitors was still clear enough to mark in memory. Dr. Quack had threatened him repeatedly to rest flat on his back throughout the week, so even Snively, the original misanthrope, could be reckoned as glad for company.

He'd been thanked by a kiss on the cheek from Bunnie (drawing a hot flush to his face that earned his compatriots, as the night before, a fresh gale of laughter). He'd been saluted by Lupe, Ari, Paulo and Dirk, praised over by Chuck, Tails and Rotor, teased by Dulcy, fussed over by Rosie, until he felt the situation unraveling before him all but surreal. And then, when only Sally remained in the room, came his most trying salutation. "Hey, SNIDE-winder," Sonic trumpeted, zooming into the fresh-linen scented hospital hut. Trying to be congenial for his new friends, Snively suppressed a groan, as the alleged rodent continued, flailing his arms, "I hear ya said ya wouldn't PEE to help Naugus! Haha, dude, man, that was WAY past!" He chortled and gave Snively a friendly smack across the arm, and the human bit his lip to muffle a whimper of pain—and a grunt of irritation. "Hey, man, _I_ KNEW you were cool _aaaall _along! The hedgehog KNOWS." He winked.

Sally, seated in a wooden chair next to Snively's cot, rolled her eyes. "Uh _huh_. I see. Have no fear, Sonic, I'm sure Snively believes your Narcissistic remarks about as much as _I_ do."

The human snickered—and then cringed, because the movement made his ribs ache. "Rest _assured_ of that, princess," he croaked.

"Hey . . ." Sonic bent closer to his bedfast ally and muttered, "Er, what's narcissistic' mean?"

Now it was Snively's turn to pat Sonic on the arm. "You don't want to know, kiddo. Might hurt your _ego_." 

Sally giggled. "Precisely. Now, it comes to my attention that we've worn you out quite enough." She gestured at Sonic, who grinned impishly and departed as wildly as he'd come, leaving the two once-apposing war generals, the princess of a fallen monarchy and the second-commander of a nightmarish autocracy, totalk. "But before I go, one last word about last night's daring deed." 

Snively's face grew drawn with worry. His lips were poised with excuses and apologies. But Sally hushed him, pressing an index finger to her lips. She dangled a tiny round chip in front of her new ally's eyes—the deroboticizer chip. It was already tarnished with considerable use. USE. Then, could that mean. . .? 

Yes, it could. "_That_ was _proof_," she whispered, smiling to confirm it.

It became apparent hat they were no longer alone. Someone, a man, lingered in the doorframe, hands clasped behind back. The glare of the sun flooding through the door obscured his face from Snively's view. Sally turned and nodded at the figure. "Come on in." 

A Mobian—vaguely familiar, but somehow transformed, padded meekly inside the room. A dull gray canine, with tousled fur sprouting from his head and nearly covering eyes of compassionate liquid gold. Pricked ears wilted timidly as he gazed upon the room's dwellers. But those eyes still shone like the lamp of a lighthouse: dipped in gray fog, but hardly snuffed. Like hope.

"Good morning," he said, and grinned.

Sprocket. 

An incredulous sob caught in Snively's throat. His best friend was deroboticized. His cardinal sin was erased. "Oh God. Oh, my _God_!" Not in vain. Not a mistake. _Never_ a mistake to care, to start over. "For Pity's Sake," he wailed, arms outstretched, forgetting his characteristically frosty demeanor, "come _here_!"

The dog immediatly obliged. A puppy again, he leapt across the room and engulfed the human in an embrace, tail lashing with enthusiasm. "_Cripes_," Snively cackled, ignoring the immediate pain, "you stink like _wet dog_!" But he couldn't be happier for the stench. It meant mud, fur and fleas and flesh, not metal. Not a cage anymore, by _his_ hands. _Freedom _by his hands, now.

Sprocket, indeed soaked from running about in a cloudburst earlier that morning, pulled away and crowed back at him. "_That_ was a bad pun, even for YOU!" Another row of chortles. 

Sally folded her hands across her chest, seething with pride. "It turns out you nailed the original deroboticizer code. Not only is this, knock on wood, permanent, but it even works on the very _earliest_ few years of victims."

"And while it requires a considerable amount of time—several _hours_--recharging the deroboticizer machine each time we reverse its affects on a victim—" here a resonant new voice, a male's—the king's, as he strolled in and made Snively's weak heart freeze—"Sir Charles and Ms. Rabbott are the next in line to freedom." He threw a wink the flabbergasted human's way. "My thanks, young man. My thanks." 

Snively stared at his _first_ Mobian benefactor, his _first_ Mobian betrayed, and remembered what he had pledged to tell the king while facing certain death at Naugus's hands. "Sire?"

"Yes, boy?"

"It . . ." He couldn't put to words now what he had been so determined to survive the wrath of Naugus in order to declare. Mercy . . . Mercy, that was what he had wanted to speak of. Forgiveness and mercy. "It wasn't a mistake, Your Majesty. It's never a mistake." 

Max glared at him; between his eyebrows and through the tawny fur of his forehead, the wrinkles of his face wrought battle between scorn and a makeshift kind of fatherly affection—that same affection which shone in his countenance for all of his daughter's young companions. The silence that ensued was the longest of Snively's life, one in which he began to fear he'd placed his thin neck right back upon the chopping block. The monarch rose a finger at his daughter; obediently, tugging Sprocket by the arm to follow her lead, she exited the hut, and left the king to his judgment. Silence.

Finally, the king spoke. "I believe you," he said. 

And the verdict:

NOT GUILTY.

The human gawked at him. "You . . . what?"

"It was your UNCLE'S mistake, his treachery. I see that now, clearer than ever before, thanks to the compassion of my daughter and her friends towards you. I think perhaps your coming to Knothole was one of the greatest lessons in my life: the lesson never to doubt my own compulsion for kindness—my own _moral character_. The lesson never to be deceived by the lie that weakness equates empathy. And what is YOUR responsibility in all this?" He fingered the end of his moustache: so cultivated it looked, so proud and clean and refined, so far a fling from the absurd orange monstrosity that was his uncle's.

So vast a difference between this man and the man who had been his uncle, who had beaten him, belittled him, twisted him, left him for worthless carnage to die. This man was nothing like his uncle. This man had his eternal fealty. 

"Anything, Milord," the nephew of Julian Kintobor said, and he meant it.

And Max smiled; it seemed he could sense the human's sincerity emanating from the very palpitations of his injured young heart. He spoke as if Snively were a broken egg fallen from a Robin's nest. "Very good, boy. Very good. But I ask no more of you than is befitting: _Yo_u must see to it that _you_ never make your uncle's mistake. For I am placing my faith and my trust in your hands: the hands of a _loyal_ kingsman. I BELIEVE you, young Kintobor. Do you understand the weight of that? The _value_ of that? _I believe you_. Do not violate it _ever _again, and you have my blessing as though you were no nephew of a tyrant, no son of an Overlander war General, but one of my very _own_." He rested a heavy, clawed hand on Snively's shoulder, as if once and for all driving demons from the boy who had come to him a fourteen-year-old spitfire. "Godspeed, little fallen fledgling. You have a second chance at getting airborne, after all." 

Snively's capacity for speech was handicapped right until the king, with a wink and a hearty pat on his shoulder, strolled from the room. 

And then, in the solitude of the infirmary room where he'd once faced down Geoffrey St. John and called himself the Freedom Fighters' fatal enemy, Robotnik's nephew wept. But this time it wasn't a miserable feeling, like vomiting or crying out in pain. This time it was like . . . laughter. This time he found out the secret of the Freedom Fighters and their camaraderie, their eternal bond of loyalty, endurance and love: He learned what it was like to feel JOY—to CRY for JOY. And it was an exquisite redemption indeed.

"Now I will tell you what I've done for you

Fifteen thousand tears I've cried

Screaming, deceiving, and bleeding for you

And you still won't hear me

I'm going under

Don't want your hand this time, I'll save myself

Maybe I'll wake up for once

Tormented daily, defeated by you

Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom

I'm dying again

I'm going under

Drowning in you

I'm falling forever

I've got to break through

So go on and scream: Scream at me, I'm so far away

I won't be broken again

I've got to breathe, I can't keep going under"

--Evanescence 

He had no idea how long he'd slept in that warm, peaceful infirmary—an hour, perhaps, two, in dozy bliss--before the rain started, pattering on the hut roof, bringing dark rumbles of thunder. A faint scent that tingled in his nostrils . . . like something burning. Still he slept a little longer . . . before he felt the harsh claw grip around his exposed neck—and the _squeeze_. And that voice, that hissing wheezing rasp, tickling his eardrum: "_Good morrow_, _little one_. _Wanna PLAY_?"

Snively gasped, gulping in buckets of air, and lurched forward, willing to endure any amount of physical pain to prove he was only dreaming. But his eyes flung open only to behold that face of a thousand rivulets and wrinkles, those glinting eyes, that hungry fanged mouth. The fingers—stroking the beard, as Ixis Naugus loosened his grip . letting the human choke for air, and turned to bark out the gaping-wide hut door, "GET in here, slave, your nephew's finally revived!" The tempest outside did not abate; it seemed, in fact, to derive directly form the faint churning glow in the wizard's pupils, as if the eye of the storm were directly above them, conjured by his very mind. However, Julian was there immediatly, huffing and puffing, pouring his bulk into the chamber, flanked by a dozen glistening SWATbots. 

"Wwha. . .?" Snively struggled under the sorcerer's grip, eyes raking the scenery outside the rain-streaked window: a thousands speckles of orange, just like the torches held by the mob come to kill him, again blazed through the gloom. Only this time, they were being held by robots. And the Freedom Fighters were nowhere to be seen. "Oh, God." Could they possibly be. . . "Where did you take them?" His voice was strange even to him, hollow, urgent, but free of fear but also of anger. Free of care. Like he was hearing another man's voice and passively calculating the meaning of the words, form some safe position far away from the maelstrom, rather than in its center. "Where have you taken the Freedom Fi . . . my _friends_?"

The wizard cackled, rejoined cautiously by a few chuckles from Robotnik. "You were right all along, Slave. Your nephew is _indeed_ the turncoat to end all turncoats. Ingratiates himself _immediately_ to the nearest benefactor like a thirsty little _leech_." Here, abruptly, he tossed the boy half-dangling in his claw flat on his back. Snively could not stifle a whimper of pure pain. "No matter. Just deal with him, so we can get on with our plans." And with that, he swooped out of the hut, tossing orders at the robots he so detested—his hated inheritance.

Snively, pale again as death, turned his eyes on his uncle, and was filled with a peculiar courage. The man who'd been his very savior was alt last no longer in control of him. He could kill him, but he couldn't beat him, not if he wasn't given the satisfaction of his weaker kinsman's groveling. Somehow it gave him pleasure more supreme than any he'd felt, to know this. So Snively finally had his power, after all—_all along_. He cast a chill look of appraisal over the great man hulked over him, with the eyes of infernos—as if Julian were a housefly--a rude and uninvited guest whom it was his duty to politely ask to leave. A typical, everyday annoyance, not a murderer prepared to strike the final blow. He sniffed. "Well? Why don't you explain for yourself? Tell me what's going on here—how you even _found_ this place. "

"Ah, a good bluff, Snively ,but I _know_ you. And I know you _fear_ me still." Julian rumbled another slow, sadistic chuckle, his fat mountain of a belly shaking, a testiment to his still-present physical and spiritual immensity. "I can _smell_ it on you, boy."

"Are you _sure_, Julian?"

Again the laugh, patronizing, dangerously charming. "I hate Naugus as you hate me. I've endured his petty maliciousness every second of everyday, and I want to be the one who kills him. I _shall_ be. And despite all that, I still _fear_ him like a great, cruel _god_. It is the same with you."

Snively was lost to the strange exhilaration of this confrontation now, his thoughts of his newfound friends and their well-being flown out the rainy window, in this moment nose-to-nose with the man who'd spawned his shame. His voice sank, a whisper, but strong, iron. Words aching to be spoken for a decade. "Naugus never meant to you what you once meant to me. My only rock and foundation in this desolate place was _killed_ the day you turned on me. My _hero died_ the day you became this _beast_ that you are. So you see, it is an entirely _different_ matter. I want you to _know_ how you hurt me. I want _you_ to feel it _too_, more than I want to even _live_." He forced a snicker. "Like a dream gone sour, old boy."

This, somehow, seemed to anger, to t_hreaten_, Julian, more than anything his nephew had yet done. "Oh, _really_?" he snarled, discarding the candid, bitter truth of Snively's heart. His face crinkled with rolls of disgust, contemptuous, sneering sugar in his voice. "Never knew you _cared_."

"You _sod off_, old man." Rabid, now, icily rabid, Snively was. "You knew _bloody_ well how you were reeling me in all those years—you _knew_ how I loved . . . how I _admired _you. Manipulating me, turning me away from Father at _every_ chance, using my _pathetic _ego to _twist _me."

"Served me _well_, didn't it, you _worthless_ _brat_ !" Now a full peal of roaring angry laughter, shaking the rafters, piercing Snively's eardrums. Robotnik grinned, jowls curled upward, moustache aquiver, at the first sign of his nephew cringing. "Well, then, why don't you tell me when I _died_,' eh? Tell me so I can _apologize before I kill you_! _HA_!" Almost a bellow of agony, rather than a laugh. Julian truly was rotting on the inside. It took no crystalline daggers from the Void to do the job for _him_. 

__

You will call me sir . . . the day you said . . . you will . . . Snively considered prolonging the debate, biting his lip, arching his back against the bed. Yet his head already throbbed, his sheets soaked with his sweat, his gut wound aching. In the stillness that followed, rain moaned in staccato verses against the hut . . . the sound of robots droning to prisoners to "move along," to "cease and desist," the angry cry of Mobians and the sound of gunshots breeding yet more silence. And then _Sonic_, hollering insults and curses into the air, joined by dozens of other voices wailing for freedom. _They were still alive—still in Knothole, even. _And suddenly Snively knew that it did no good to dwell on the obsessions that could be forever locked in the past. Suddenly he remembered his friends again. _I will call you no such thing, Julian. I'll do as I please with you. _"Perhaps we should get back to the business at hand."

"Oh, _should _we?" The despot chortled, more subdued now, for he believed he had won the battle. He heaved himself onto the edge of the bed. The old wood grunted under his weight but held him. "I don't see the harm in _explaining for myself._' It might even be _fun_ to see the _horror _on your face."

__

Good boy, Julian. Spill your guts to me. Tell me everything so I can get a clear shot at your back again. 

"Typically, my _dear_ boy, you were far too engrossed in your _own _suffering self-pity to consider the consequences of your actions on _another_. Inside this very treasure you stole from my headquarters is a microscopic _tracking device_ . . . that _I_ installed. I have only _you_ to thank, Snively, for leading my entire army _directly_ to Knothole." Robotnik thundered another lusty laugh, and waved the deroboticizer chip over Snively's head. "And now, I plan to _erase _the _only_ sin I should _never_ have committed: the possibility of reverting my _greatest_ creation's work." Lard-weighted fingers pinched Snively's sallow cheek and turned it aflame; he cooed a sound of mock pity directly into the youth's furrowed brows, and patted, or rather slapped, that ruddied cheek. "_Scared_ now, _little boy_? Scared of your _old uncle_?" And then he sneered, placing one hand directly over Snively's woundand _squeezed_. Hard. The youth gagged back a scream as his uncle leered ever closer. "Aww, come now. Give us a _kiss_ on the cheek for _old time's sake_. For _remembrance_. " But the tyrant's nephew lurched every inch of himself from his uncle's touch, ripped his torso from the man's reach, jaw set, with such ferocity that it made Robotnik step back. The tyrant blinked in shock and consternation. He'd thought his taunts thoroughly amusing until they'd been thwarted.

Snively spat on the ground at his uncle's feet, doing his best to mask the physical pain borne of his violent maneuvers. It was difficult. "Only a man like you," he hissed, seething, every word lashed with venom and acid, "no, only a BEAST like you . . . could turn a deed meant for healing into a fatal wound. But it won't pay off, Julian. I may not live to see it, but you'll DIE at the hands of the people you've wronged--someday. You'll REALLY learn what it's like to be the POWERLESS one, not for a week, or a few months, but a LIFETIME." 

For a split second, eyes lost in the arctic electricity of his nephew's, Robotnik believed Snively utterly. He rose a hand, abruptly, violently, and snarled. 

Snively did not cringe, the voltage in his eyes not once smitten. He bit his lower lip until he tasted blood, clutching each side of his bed so as not to tremble from the ache in his gut; he had grown more terrified of backing down, giving up, now, than of facing a monster's inevitable wrath. Yet somehow, it drained the despot of his vicious satisfaction, and back over his meaty face again washed that peculiar look of bewilderment. . .uncertainty. He lowered his fist, shuddered, and . . . and . . . 

__

Turned away. "Goodbye, Snively," he breathed, and backed away. "I shan't miss YOU." 

The youth managed a raspy chuckle. "Oh, really, dear uncle? I thought you SHOULD miss the groveling of your putrid little lackey." 

At the doorway, his uncle turned; fury smoldered in his coal red eyes. "A lackey, yes. You? _Never_. You aren't that miserable coward that I watched grow up under my brother's thumb. You're not the same person, _damn_ you—you just spoke your mind to my face, for the SECOND time in 24 hours—with nothing between us but AIR! You're NO man's slave anymore, boy. You're USELESS to me. At last, I truly want you _dead_." Then, bizarrely, he smiled, the ends of his orange moustache quivering like the tongues of fire outside. It was the closest thing Snively had ever seen to admiration on his uncle's face. "Congratulations, Snively. I'm impressed with you." And as Robotnik turned and exited, the boy was almost certain he heard his uncle add, "I'm _proud_ of you." 

Then the fat tyrant nodded at a figure lurking in the doorway, a silver Robian slave—hauntingly familiar, it was—and bid it enter. "Finish him," Robotnik mumbled in its jagged ear, somehow unable to turn back and look his nephew in the eye as he spoke it. "We're bound for the city with the citizens of Knothole. Join us as soon as you are done, and see to it that you are among those who return later to burn the village to the dust." And with that, the pleasure drawn from the act of his nephew's death somehow tainted, lost in the creases of befuddlement around his hellish eyes, he vanished.

The creature marched in, and Snively feared himself in a nightmare from which he could not escape. For the robot was _Sprocket_. "How?!!" he half-wheezed. "_Why_?" 

WHY? 

The canine dove for the bed and clasped a hand about Snively's mouth, urgent for silence. He turned to the empty doorway, ensured their solitude, and then murmured in the human's ear, "Quit simple, really. The deroboticizer's sole separate characteristic from the roboticizer is that, with the chip you provided, it has the _reverse_ switch that has become our miracle." He looked to the sleek, shining—alien—hand covering his friend's lips, and smiled bitterly. "I realized that, other than that, when necessity deems so, it can provide the _same_ gruesome services as its counterpart." 

"You roboticized _yourself_?" Snively's voice grew hoarse. ". . . _Again_?"

"Hey," and the dog shrugged, "at least it was my CHOICE this time, eh?" He rested that hand on the human's shoulder to soften the blow of his remark. Cold and chillingly smooth though it was, it served its purpose. Snively was listening as his friend continued to explain his purpose, far more entwined in saving their pardoners than in his own guilt. "When I saw them appearing from the trees and foliage, and start to capture. . . to . . . to _slaughter._ . . . the denizens of this gracious village . . . I knew that if I could be mistaken for a _workerbot,_ I might be able to take advantage of my ruse and set you all _free_."

"B-but he took the chip! You can't go _back_ now—to being REAL! You're _stuck _that way!" Snively could feel rage swelling in his throat as he ranted; rage at everyone but the one creature still standing before him, still standing by him, who had done no wrong to deserve his imprisonment. "How COULD you? You've killed yourself!"

Sprocket just chuckled at him. "Easily. I could easily. Because I care for you. For all of you. And that makes me as real as any creature of flesh."

"But I don't understand."

Sprocket's eyes grew warm, like the last orange-hued embers in a fire welcoming the viewer to trust in their nurturing glow. "You do, more than you think. Otherwise you'd not be lying there in that bed. You'd not even _protest_ the act if it meant saving your hide, if you _really_ did not understand. And in any case, my plan has worked, so far." He rose an index finger, grinning, tail once again a-wag. "It was delicious, Snively. Your uncle thought he was being _wonderfully_ cruel when he sent your best friend in here to kill youwhat he _didn't_ know was that I was still up _here_." He tapped that finger on his head. "But then again, Robotnik knows _nothing_ of souls except how to _destroy_ them."

"Bravo," Snively forced a smile, though he felt his energy squandered by his uncle's attack only minutes before, and by the sense of meaninglessness in his friend's hour-long freedom from his metallic shell. He struggled to keep his eyes from fluttering shut and submitting to slumber—and to futility. "He'll not get _ours_, will he?" he made himself declare. "Now, help me out of here—if we live but another hour, old friend, then by the Forked Tongue of Naugus, we'll at least have died TRYING to save those bloody crusading _kids_!" He rolled his eyes.

"And their king as well—_our_ king." Sprocket slung Snively's nearest arm over his shoulder and lifted him out of the bed. As they crouched below the window sill and awaited the last SWATbot to clear from the village, Snively caught sight of the state of the prisoners. Sally, Sonic, Antoine, Tails, even Bunnie—every spared citizen of Knothole, new and old--were tethered together in a single file line, at the hands, by electrical wires—the same he'd recalled cutting through his own flesh. He winced empathetically. And then he saw hope—in the eyes of the lumbering Dulcy—who, at the rear of the line, was looking directly at him. He flashed her a thumbs up before dodging back below the sill, and caught her flicking a similar gesture back. 

Then he winked at Sprocket, cupped his ear and indicated the dog to do the same: Soon, sure enough, a chorus of cricket chirps, birdcalls, and frog croaks floated on the breeze. The Freedom Fighters were communicating to each other.

"Is that what I _think_ it is?" the canine gawked. 

"Their own personal Morse Code system, yes. They're telling each other, without arousing suspicion, that we are alive and well—and that we're coming for them."

"Alright, then," Sprocket retorted, eager ambition in his glare. He helped Snively to stagger again to his feet. "To quote a wise old anonymous sage . . . or rather a band of extraordinary makeshift rebels . . . _let's do it to it._" 

Sprocket's android-caliber strength was a godsend during those next two hours. He was able to carry Snively and hover silently, fully off-ground, in pursuit of the grim line of prisoners. And Snively already had a plan.

"We free the rodent as soon as we can—he can manage anything," the human murmured, glancing sidelong at the gully below them, where their target marched unawares. They had reached a particularly dense part of the forest, where timeless oaks covered the canopy and maples filled the space in between, dipped in the center to fill a tiny valley. He and Sprocket had chosen a hill elevated about ten feet above it, to the left side, to hover alongside unseen. Naugus's energetic strides could be spotted at the front of the line, in the mossy dark green gully, Robotnik lumbering at his heels like a starving mongrel. Foolishly, they had concentrated all of the prime Freedom Fighters—the King, Sonic, Sally, and the lot—in one spot near the rear of the crowd. SWATs, however, congregated, shiny gray specs like the carcasses of flies on a hovercraft windshield, around the two monarchs' persons. Despite the present danger, Sonic, the sole neon sapphire brushstroke against the dull landscape, wrenched viciously against his bonds at five-minute intervals. At times, Sally joined him. Always, they found themselves stilled by the perilously aimed barrel of a bot's laser pistol. This would be a challenge yet.

Sprocket chuckled, bringing Snively's attention back to the strategy session. "The rodent,' eh?" 

"Aw, shut up. Old habits die hard." The human clung tighter to the dog as they slung low to the ground, Sprocket's stomach nearly brushing with the grass—for the foliage that veiled them in the hillside had grown thinner.

"Alright, alright, withdrawn. And the other part of the plan . . . ?" 

"_Foolproof_. It'll buy me the chance to set Sonic loose."

"Alright, here's _hoping_."

Snively suppressed a sigh. "Indeed. Not a bad idea, says I. Now, spread some of this nasty stomach-killing redberry juice over your hands. You killed me, remember?" 

The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle tipped in late winter sleet, making the steps of robots slippery and the hides of Mobians wet and deathly cold, their fur clinging slick to their skin. Still not a one of the prisoners would stoop to asking for a torch, or one of the layers of cloak blankets with which Naugus had buffered himself; they bit back their suffering, young and old alike. Bunnie, it seemed, was the sorest among them; having never had her chance to taste the freedom the datachip had offered—not enough _time_, before the SWATs came pillaging and ravaging with their guns and their faceless, numb rage, before Robotnik strode into Uncle Chuck's hut and plucked the treasure from the hedgehog's worktable, into the oblivion of his glove, and stolen her life yet again. Chuck had taken the blow with anger, rebellion, more resolved than ever to get back his birthright to liberty—struggling nearly as fiercely against his bonds as his bright blue nephew. But since the moment she was tethered, physically as well as spiritually, Bunnie had spoken not one word. Like a blazing light snuffed, drowned.

They reached a stop at a fork in the forest path; Naugus, vexed by the unexpected ambiguity as to which turn to make, snarled at Robotnik to make some kind of location check. Thick face and withered moustache glistening with moisture, the despot grunted some indiscernible orders at the SWAt bot patrol near the front. Bleeping and whirring ensued, and the cluster of SWATs abated around Sally and King Max, arms outstretched, tracking the area—vainly, as they had never before charted the Great Forest--for landmarks with their electronic compasses. The incompetent scene drew Naugus and Robotnik into a heated question-and-answer session; despite the joy of hearing the human tyrant reduced to a beggar, Sally knew to take advantage of this commotion to quiz her comrades. "They're alive, then?"

"And kickin'!" Dulcy giggled, proud of her role in the rescue she was confident would come. "They were in the infirmary right when we shoved off. I think Robotnik didn't know that Sprocket was still a free Mobian."

"The fortunate ignorance of a monster," Chuck mumbled. 

"Indeed," breathed the king, bravely at the head of the group, his eyes never once averting from the two arguing figures far to the front of the line. Pure unabashed hate filled in his gaze for his captors. "Perhaps they might still come for us." 

Geoffrey remained mute, but Sonic's keen ears pricked, and absorbed every word. "I'll be on the lookout," he whispered, turning to nod at the dragon. "I'll be _ready_. Just give the signal, and we're outta here." He rubbed his tethered wrists together, slowly, feverishly, itching with impatience. 

"No, just give me some time," Sally murmured. "Just some time, to think of a diversion, and _I _can get us out . . ." 

"Who are _they?_' " Antoine, in his typical state of oblivious, barely-harnessed hysterics, cut her off. He dug his heels into the dirt, stamped his foot like an infant. "An army? The secret service? How many of them are charging in to save us? Ten dozen, n'est-ce pas? _Mon oeil_! _Zut_! Who is _left_? How do you know they are even _coming_?" His lower lip trembled, his ears wilting and his brave sarcasm lost. 

Dulcy craned her neck down into the coyote's ear. "I SAW Snively. He gave me a thumbs up. I KNOW they're coming for us. The _two _of them." 

"So it's just Snip-ley . . . it's just the Shreempboat, and that robot dog _fuel_ who can save us now?" Antoine moaned.

"That's the look of it, Mate," Geoffrey nodded, chawing grimly on the end of his bandanna. 

The coyote let out a dejected whine. "We are _doom_-ed!" 

The entire company, prepared to march again, turned now to face them. So much for discretion. Robotnik pivoted on his heel, cloak billowing behind him, and bellowed towards the back. "QUIET, slave! You DARE to yammer idly in _my_ presence?"

Naugus wheezed a cackle, gesturing with mock hospitality in Antoine's direction. "I should think that your observation were already _evident_, boy," he sneered. Rows of shark fangs bared, as he stroked his snowy beard. "But if you insist one more time that I haven't made it _obvious_, I shall use _you_ to demonstrate your _very_ _present_ _peril_." 

A snickering among the ranks of partially sentient workerbots: They illustrated his point by jabbing the butts of their laser pistols in various ribcages, eyes, and groins. Particularly amusing seemed to be the taunting of Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts, the most wanted traitors to the regime aside Snively himself. Now pitiful, helpless fools, the three Badniks cowered together and whimpered twice as loudly as Antoine had. "But I just wanted to be _real_," the gangly rooster protested weakly to his former masters, just as a roboticized grizzly bear's foot struck at his right knee and dented it. The clang resounded in the treetops, and Scratch tumbled to the ground. Rotor rushed to the robot, as best he could in his own bonds, and braced him under his shoulder, helping him to stand.

"_Cork_ it, Twan," Bunnie growled in her petrified lover's ear, while Sally did her best not to roll her eyes, and King Max, now trudging alongside her, did his best not to agree with the coyote's sentiments.

Crouched in the grass as though finally one with the landscape, Snively made the final twists on the knob of his newly invented rescue device. "My hero. Puh." He slid up the slender antennae that would do the miracles of the next hour, and aimed it at the gulley below, at the head of the prisoner line. One eye squinbted shut as he made a practice aim at his target. "Well, thanks for the _memories_, Julian. Here's where _you_ get _yours._" He nodded at Sprocket, hunkered down beside him. "Commence mission."

Five eternal, icy minutes passed under the merciless clouds before it happened. But when it did, it swooped them all into wonderment. The rescue.

"Sir," a nameless workerbot hummed, pointing a stiff pistol aim at the edge of a winding starboard hill. "Master Naugus, unidentified life form detected." 

The sorcerer darted to the center of the line, clutching Robotnik's cape and dragging him alongside. Bottomless black eyes scanned and assessed the silver hued robot that paced mindlessly towards the line, halted, and rigidly saluted. "No, it's not. It's just another of your creations, Julian," he hissed, "that dog that you sent to finish your nephew. _Deal_ with it." 

The Freedom Fighters collectively gasped. It was Sprocket, marching straight into the lion's den.

Robotnik nodded his grudging respect as Naugus passed back to the front of the line; he turned on the canine, whose stare was, by all judgments, a vacant as that of a corpse's. His eyes fell approvingly upon the red rivulets decorating the dog's fingers. Like blood. "I trust you've completed your task as ordered?"

Sprocket's expression did not change. "Affirmative, sir."

"Good." Spoken with malice, as the despot turned to sneer his triumph at the select cluster of Freedom Fighters that he knew might care. He grabbed one of the dog's hands, flashed it in plain sight for the group to see. "One less mosquito for me to swat. One more friend for _you_ to _grieve_." 

Tails, cowering behind Sonic, let out a whimper. But Sally caught Sprocket's eye, dug into his brain like a drill. While Robotnik was still gloating and inattentive, the dog shed his mindless veil and nodded at her once, infinitesimally, like a leaf quivering once in an autumn breeze. She understood—it was paramount that she pretended she believed this was true. So she bowed her head, shook it slowly, like a true mourner, gave a tiny bird whistle, and at once her false grief was shared. As if none of them ever expected to be saved.

Robotnik barked a laugh, thinking the bestial chirps and croaks among them nothing but bohemian chatter. "Excellent, Workerbot 9000. You always were a _particular_ prize of mine. Broke my nephew in, you did, like a fresh young colt that needed a good backache, a good hard ride, to get used to his job. Yes, capital, my fine metallic warrior! " He stroked Sprocket's newly-sleek head, as if he were polishing a trophy. His words, despite the knowledge of Snively's actual health, drew an acute bout of fury from Bunnie, who snarled like a caged beast and writhed against her bonds. This only goaded Robotnik on—precisely as Sporcket had planned. "Ha, yes! Appropriate _indeed_ that you break him _eternally _as well." 

"ROBOTNIK!" a roar from Naugus split the air. "Quit dawdling, you _fool_!" 

The tyrant grew somber to hide his humiliation, and strode to the front, tossing over his shoulder, "Now, get back in the ranks, _slave_!"

At last unattended, the canine marched slowly past the cluster of Freedom Fighters, stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth at them, and cast his eyes upward at the unsightly fingerprints Robotnik had left on his skull. A few dared to laugh conspiratorially back. Then he flashed the familiar thumbs-up of Snively. "Sit tight, we have it under control. Just _trust_ me." And then, like a flash, he was gone, to the far rear of the line, resuming his ruse of brainlessness. Still, Sally noted, as he passed, a peculiar gizmo strapped to his belt, with a tiny hair-fine wire running up to a plug in his neck. 

It looked, peculiarly, a great deal like a portion of the wristwatch Snively had doctored up for Tails. Only, that little microphone insert was missing . . .

They had been trodding in silence for another ten minutes before a small shower of rocks from the hill above nearly buried Naugus—and trapped the company in a narrow ravine from which the only escape, it seemed, was airborne. The wizard sidestepped the falling debris like a rattler slithering, but he was already suspicious. And angry. 

Just as expected.

"SLAVE!" he snapped his staple command. "_Deal_ with it." 

For a malicious kick, Robotnik chose Sprocket once again to do his work. 

Just as expected. 

"Workerbot 9000, go scout that hill for intruders," the despot growled, flinging an arm at the source of the avalanche.

"As you command." The canine appeared, flawlessly docile, and began to clamber up the hill, flawlessly passive. The two tyrants stood together watching him intently. He finally vanished entirely into the foliage.

Then it happened. "As you command." Sprocket's voice, precisely in tone, cadence, pitch, but it came from the line of SWATbots. _It came from a SWATbot._ And this time it was filled with life—_mocking_ them. 

"As you command, JULIAN." The canine's voice in another SWAT, this time inches from Robotnik, who recoiled in horror. "What? How?"

"Julian, JulianJulianJULIANJULIANJULIAN. . ." it was like a domino effect, a plague, an infestation of colorful taunting life. The vocal component of every SWATbot, in turn, without otherwise being altered in behavior, was filled with Sprocket's laughing voice, uttering over and over again the hated, inadequate, forbidden name of the past . . . calling back the ghost of an inadequate _man_, the only mane Robotnik truly feared. . . as if someone somewhere were broadcasting the dog's words over a radio signal into every robot present—a masterful ventriloquist act. Suddenly the canine reappeared, seemingly complacent, eyes unblinking. 

"Slave," Naugus hissed a warning. Robotnik began to panic. He flung himself at Sprocket, grabbed him and shook him. "How are you doing this?" he roared. "HOW, damn you! You're dead! DEAD!" 

"Never." The workerbots's vocal chords began to taunt as well, with different slanders: "Fool, louse, failure, traitor, killerkillerkillerKILLER . . . " Still Sprocket stared back, as if uncomprehending, as if impassive to the despot's maimed and terrified cries. "What's the matter, killer?" One workerbot near the tensely prepared—and grinning—Freedom Fighters called, in the canine's voice. "AFRAID OF YOURSELF?"

Robotnik screamed and turned to the workerbot, smashing it in two with his fist, dropping Sprocket, who, flopped in the dirt, at last dared to grin. The taunts flowed ever louder. Suddenly the whole ravine reverberated with the canine's voice, like a festival of unseen poltergeists possessing the iron shells of the despot's sentries. Try though he might, Robotnik could not shut them all up, for fear of losing every robot present to the scrap heap. He let out another bellow of terror and rage. 

"What sorcery is _this_?" Naugus snarled, covering his ears. 

Sonic hooted with laugher, and Sally snapped her fingers, finally understanding. The rock avalanche had been an excuse, a diversion. Sprocket had been installed with the microphone from Tails's watch, from the inside—he need not open his mouth once. And someone else was broadcasting these signals into every compatible robotic voice code in the vicinity, making it seem as though the voice of the canine were everywhere. Even Uncle Chuck, Jules and Bernie, and the Badnik trio found themselves uttering words not of their own accord. Sally clapped her hands together and cheered, if not in victory, in astonishment. For that someone else—the only person aside Chuck and Rotor whom she knew could do something so technologically sophisticated . . . must be _Snively_. _Hot damn_. 

The princess took her father's taut arm in hers, and whispered in his ear, "Daddy, take heart, there's still _hope_!"

"So I gather," he breathed back, and winked at her.

Sprocket nodded up at the trees and signaled a thumbs up. Then deep concentration cut across his silver face. Immediatly, a SWATbot stationed directly behind Naugus acquired a deep, rumbling voice, etched with a Northern Territory human accent, and growled, "Stupid, pathetic wizard, you _never did_ have the goods on _me_!" Not an identical match, but close enough, amidst the din, for a paranoid old sorcerer to mistake as the voice of Robotnik. 

"HOW DARE YOU!" Naugus exploded, diving for his fat slave, who was still thoroughly occupied running in rabid circles, chasing after unwittingly impudent SWATbots. He was stopped dead in his tracks when the sorcerer cast his claw upward and clicked—raising him bodily into the air. "You SAUCY CUR, HOW DARE YOU THREATEN ME?! This is all YOUR trickery, isn't it, HUMAN? Isn't it—JULIAN?!"

Robotnik's own fury, finally too overwhelming to sedate, did its work to augment their miscommunication. "What are you _blabbering _about, you old _COOT_?!" he thundered, pointing a wobbling finger at the trees. " The real threat is out _there _somewhere! I'm _trying_ to thwart an _ambush_!" He flailed his great dangling legs for the earth, for a chance toflee. To abandon. To betray once again.

But Naugus wasn't listening. 

Just as expected. 

"Old coot! OLD COOT! How's THIS for an old coot?" The wizard clicked his claw wildly, and the human screeched in pain, his belly wriggling . . . as if something were embedded in it from the inside. 

"Oh _hellfire_!" Robotnik bellowed, clutching himself. "I HATE YOU, Naugus!" 

The were, at this point, utterly locked in an oblivious head-on battle. Hapless as to what to do, thirsty for orders, the abandoned SWATs and workerbots meandered aimlessly about the ravine. It was then that Sonic felt a tickling at his back, a single hairless finger poking him. He whirled around to see Snively, holding something that looked like a makeshift intercom, built half of the parts of Tails's watch, with a radio antennae attached to the top. He was smirking. "Good afternoon, hedgehog. Need a bit of assistance?" 

"Slimely," the hedgehog cackled, "I could _kiss _you, man!" In accord, the surrounding Freedom Fighters let out a soft sort of cheer—even the king himself.

The human, still weak from his wound, limped up to Rotor and retrieved a pocketknife from his toolbelt. So many _little things_ that Robotnik and Naugus had underestimated, had carelessly left unattended to. Like the measly pack of Mobiasn refugees who'd rechristened themselves "Freedom Fighters." Like . . . _himself_. He ambled back to Sonic, while the two despots still raged at each other, while the robots still wandered, and cut the cords around the "rodent's" wrists with one delighted jerk. "Go keep them distracted, if you please." He gestured to Sprocket, who came careening their way, tail wagging like wildfire. The voices he bred finally stopped, but the two tyrants were far too engrossed in each other to notice. 

"Music to my ears." The hedgehog grinned; there was more than a little mischief—a little sadism—in that impish young face. "Turn em loose, Sniv-meister!" And he barreled straight towards the battling Robotnik and Naugus—or rather, the assaulting Naugus and the victim Robotnik. "_Wake up_, _slow-moes_!" the rebel teen crowed. It took two seconds before the robots, grateful for the comfort of an overriding order, began to drone the old familiar "_Emergency Order Overrride_!" and "_Hedgehog, Priority One! Detain! Detain_!"

"What?" Robotnik managed to gag, in a headlock by Naugus. "No, you fools! Watch the prisoners! The _prisoners_!" 

But an order was an order. And so the bots continued to chase Sonic, in crazy circles around the feuding tyrants, until they were both so disoriented and the bots so overheated that they all collapsed in an immense pile of metal and frustration. Sonic just laughed, and tossed them a salute. 

The brief meantime had been spent fruitfully—Snively freeing Rotor, Sally, and Chuck, and the four of them using tool knives and lasers to untether the entire line of prisoners into the hands of Sprocket and Dulcy, who flew them to safety above the ravine. They fled immediatly in turn for Knothole. 

Robotnik shook his head struggling with the mad, spinning vertigo in his head, and felt a hand slip inside the lining of his glove—retrieving the deroboticizer chip. He looked up into the scornful, dreadfully amused eyes of his far-from-dead nephew, as well as the sparkling gaze of his archnemesis. Snively, one hand gripped to Sonic's shoulder, dangled the chip over his uncle's face, and snatched it away as the despot grabbed for it . . . and fell back to the ground. "Be seeing you, Julian," the youth cooed, much in the same manner as he had to Geoffrey the day he'd been freed of the skunk's custody. _Freed. _And then, firmly clasping the hedgehog, he sped off into the distance. Gone.

"_Slaaaaaave_!" Naugus roared, at the tyrant lying on top of him and at the empty, prisoner-deprived ravine. He rose his claw, vengeance in his eyes.

Robotnik bellowed in terror, in consternation and confusion, as he had in years past. Only now, with a particular ring of hopelessness:

"_Snively_!"

For this time, there was no answer.

They did not stop until they had reached Knothole itself, where fellowship and thanks exploded like a supernova. Snively and Sprocket felt like the battle scarred heroes of the Great War, swallowed up in the cheering crowd. Amazed at his own disinterest and shyness in praise, the human requested that he merely be allowed to return to his bed for a long rest. 

Once he'd been carefully strewn out on the cot in the infirmary, Sprocket seated beside him, Snively was greeted by the person he'd been wanting to see since the night before. Bunnie. 

She came in like the storm of the previous day, unbridled, flinging her arms around his neck and squeezing. "_Did_ you hear the good news, Sugah? Not only has Robotnik lost the location of Knothole in that datachip that you've gone an' swiped back, but Uncle Chuck says that someday soon, he can get it _fixed_! Just a few more missions to he city for parts, and the Bunnie Bod'll be back for _good_!" Another squeeze. "You sho' got the guts of an ironside!" 

_Never in vain. _Snively felt the tips of his lips softly curving upward. He allowed himself to discard his hard-shelled exterior just long enough to return his gratitude. Adoration—the type of which he'd never known he was capable—made his eyes bright and his cheeks again ruddy. "I'm really glad, Bunnie. And . . . and thanks." _For waking me up. For giving me my chance. For everything._

She understood. She always understood. "Sho' thing," the sweet girl breathed, pushing, with her roboticized hand, a wayward strand of hair out of his eyes. She threw him a playful wink. 

"My only fear," he added, trying to grapple for some levity, for a joke, "is that once I'm better, I owe your young friend Tails a new watch!"

She laughed. "After what _we've_ been through, _that_ should be easy enough!"

Snively chuckled back, eyes wandering for a moment. He spotted, amazingly, who but Geoffrey St. John entering the back of the hut. There was unabashed contempt in the skunk's ebon face, but he nodded at Snively, grudgingly, relinquishing something very heavy indeed. His face lightened. And then his lips formed mute words of pardon: "_Not bad . . . _"

Snively smirked, relenting. " . . . _For a human_," he mouthed back, raising an eyebrow. Hiding the darkness bubbling just underneath.

****

One week later, Knothole

Sally awoke to the scream as she had lived all her life—ready for that which was too awful to imagine or to expect. Uttered around five in the morning, just before sunrise. It was a tremulous, broken noise, more grievous than afraid, and it diminished as if the throat responsible for its birth were vanishing into the forest beyond. 

Or, more specifically, the Ring Pool, to which her ears and a dim flashlight led her robe-clad form. 

She came upon Snively Kintobor, crouched alone at the Pool with his back to her, weeping bitterly, and immediately feared the worst. 

"Snively?" She shone her light on his back, sweat soaking through his thin white nightshirt. "Snively, are you all—"

She got no further. He spun around to face her. It was not the confusion on his face, or his tears, that shocked her this time. It was the blood. 

Streaked all down his right arm, staining his unbuttoned shirt and torso, his pants, in tiny snaking crimson rivers, all originating from a gash in his open palm. A knife lay discarded a few feet from him, the blade stained with red incrimination. 

"My gosh . . . what _happened_?" She crouched on her knees and approached him slowly, disarming herself as best she could. The candid, almost childlike look of troublement on his white face showed that he would willingly share. "Did someone _attack_ you?" She wouldn't put it past quite a few Knotholers who still held a grudge. 

"Yeah. _Me_."

"_You_? I don't understand—"

"Nightmare," he half moaned, half snapped, blinking, gazing at the blood on his arm with a mixture of fear and distaste. "Got mixed up. N-nothing urgent. Sorry. Just go back to bed . . . if you _like_."

It was an indirect, but desperate, invitation for her to stay. So the princess did not move from her subject's side. "I don't mind. It's almost dawn. I'd have gotten up in only another fifteen minutes or so, anyway. Can I see that cut, please?"

Snively didn't hear her. He made no gesture to come closer to her, out of the darkness, to allow her to examine and heal. Rather, he seemed to take her response as an allowance that he spill all his troubles upon her lap. "I dreamt . . . you see, I dreamt that Naugus . . and my uncle . . . and my father . . they were all holding me by the wrists, and I had to cut loose from them . . . I had to get away . . . I suppose I got confused even after I woke up . . ." Here he turned even grayer. "That is, . . . _if _I did . . . and I got a knife from the workshop hut next door. . ." Suddenly his words became jumbled, manic, breathless: "And I was trying to cut their hands Sally I could _feel _their hands still around mine I could _hear _them laughing I _swear _I could I swear to _God _I could but I got _mine _instead and . . . and. . ." He covered his face, rubbing it, staining it with blood, looking like he'd murdered and cannibalized someone . . . but it was _himself_ whom he'd been targeting _all along_, and so all Sally could feel for him, now, was pity. "I sound crazy. Stupid. You can't take a crazy man seriously. I'm sorry, I'll shut up." 

Sally began to address his hidden face cautiously. Fro some strange reason, her heart was hammering in her chest. "Snively, I _can_ take you seriously. It's alright. You _gave _us _so much_ last week—"

"But I don't _want_ to give anymore. I don't _want_ to help you. I _miss _not caring. I miss being NUMB!" He rocked back and forth in his spot, splatters of his nosebleed littering the crisp white-gray limestone about the Ring Pool. "Can you bear the fact that an _ingrate_ lives in your midst? I can't swear by my goodness. I am too used to _neglecting_ it."

She seated herself next to him. How well aware she was of his words—this strange, perverse, gaunt creature before her still flickered across the borders of her nightmares. And probably always would. But what could she do now, aside giving him his eternal _chance_? It was the only right thing to do—and it was her _choice_ to do it. "You are _used_ to seeing the _worst_ in people. We have seen the _best_ in you. Try and do the same, Snively. All will fall into place, in time. _In time_." He held still, seeming to ponder this.

Finally Sally was able to advance right next to him. She examined the cut—it was small, hardly threatening—but it had bled a surprising quantity before clotting. _Just like him, _Sally mused. _Seemingly insignificant, but then neglect gave him a chance to do enormous damage to us. _But, no. These were darker thoughts meant to remain in a darker time gone by. She hoped.

"Here, _Freedom Fighter_." Sally clutched the red armband with its begrudging stigma. T for traitor. She slid it off his arm and crumpled it in her hands until it was invisible. "Allow me to ERASE this for you."

A long silence passed before Snively heaved a great breath, coughed, and wiped his eyes dry. He staggered to his feet, tore off his shirt, and wiped himself clean of the blood. Then he wrapped what unstained area remained about the gushing wound on his palm. Still gray in complexion, he had at least grown calmer. He sniffed haughtily—suddenly cockier--_braver_. And somehow. . . more _determined_. "Alright. Alright, then, Princess." Snively seized it back for a moment, drawing a look of shock from Sally; just as abruptly, however—and with even greater resolve—he tossed the mark of his transgressions into the bonfire. It made quick comrades with the ashes. With oblivion. 

Robotnik's nephew turned to face the princess, then. Beneath her tameless auburn locks, one eyebrow rose, a challenge and an acceptance all at once, and her hand outstretched towards him in anticipation. She understood. 

He grasped it firmly in his, sealing the truce. "Let's _do_ it." 

She frowned at him. "Do what, Snively?" 

Crystalline blue eyes beheld the sunrise cutting warm hues across the crisp morning air, orange and pink tickling the treetops. Fresh and clean, hope dancing in the sparrow's chant and the kissing breeze. And for a moment, though the day would prove weary and the night might at times yield to the darkness that obscured the stars. . . . just for a moment, Snively Kintobor believed, with his whole weak, tattered, tarnished soul, in the _morning_. Dwelling in _potential_. Daring the demons that still chased him to dispute what he had come to learn. For it would help, this new hope, to quicken his pace. It would at least _help_. "I mean. . ." He nodded at the sunrise, and gave Sally's hand one last shake.

"I mean. . . _Let's try again_."

**********************

__

"Yes, it is the dawn that has come . . . as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret." –Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country . 

__

. . . . The Beginning J . . . .


End file.
